50 People Share The Most Extreme Cases Of Helicopter Parenting That They've Witnessed

More extreme in the duration than the act itself: my 71-year-old grandmother still phones my 51-year-old mother three times a day demanding to know where she is and what she's doing.

My first roommate in college had a helicopter mom. She would:

* He was born deaf, [but] she never allowed him to learn sign language because she would "always be there to protect him," and "he needs to live a normal life, not a deaf life" (her words, not mine). He was pretty good at lip reading and could vocalize remarkably well given how profound his hearing loss was.

* She pulled me aside and very seriously asked me to inform her any time he talked to a girl... She said he [had] "problems" with girls trying to take advantage of him.

* Insisted he say goodnight to her every night, which meant he had to be on instant messenger (deaf, so he couldn't call without using a specialized typing phone) with her for at least an hour every night, or else she'd call our room phone in a panic looking for him.

Went to school for animation and one kid in my school was absolutely obnoxious. His parent apparently homeschooled him and groomed him to be "master animator". One of our earliest assignments was to animate a bouncing ball and the professor gave him a "B" saying how he drew a bowling ball but it bounced like a tennis ball. The next day the kid came with his parents and uncle who was a physicist to prove to the professor that the bowling ball would bounce the way it did when dropped from the height his beloved nephew dropped it from and demanded that they gave him an A. After they left the professor grabbed the student and yelled at him saying if his ridiculous family members ever stepped foot in his classroom again, he would fail and kick him out of the department.

My brother had it pretty bad. He ended up being locked in his room for the summer because he went to his high school grad party without permission. (He could leave for food, or to use the bathroom) He decided "f**k it" and went to college far away. He's doing extremely well for himself now. He's in a fraternity, and interning as an actuary.

When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to talk on the phone without my mom or grandmother listening in from another phone in the house. If i wanted to send a personal letter they had to read it before it went in the mail, and of course they opened anything that came addressed to me. I also had to write in a diary daily which they were allowed to read. Schoolwork I had to let one of them read before I turned it in and then when it was graded, show them the comments the teacher had made. My mom would even go through my trash and if she found something - a note from a friend, a phone number jotted down on a notecard, etc- she would iron out the paper and make me explain it.

For a while, I wasn't allowed any toys that weren't educational. When i was 5 my grandpa bought me a Transformer and before i was allowed to play with it he had to make a 2 hour defense to my grandma that the transformer was not only a pretty accurate model of a real military jet, but also a puzzle and having it would foster patriotism and an interest in technology and otherwise improve my mind. In the end I got to keep it. She didn't know it was from a tv show or it would've gone right in the trash.

Going to see movies wasn't a matter of "hey mom can I have money for a movie?" I had to cut an ad for it and a review out of the paper, highlight the parts of the ad and review that made me interested in the film, and present these to an adult at dinner. The adults in the house would then debate the pros and cons of me seeing the movie, and sometimes i would be allowed to go- supervised, of course.

My best friend in high school, and I kind of helped her dodge her father the best she could. So, like, I became the crazy, Satanist, lesbian heathen even though I was, like, none of those things.

She wasn't allowed to talk to people not of their religion (she did anyway). She wasn't allowed to own fiction books (I hid them for her). They didn't want her drawing or writing because her imagination was dangerous (we had art parties). God forbid she go to college or get a job because where would they be without her (I smuggled her to a community college to put in an application).

Unfortunately, she now lives with her parents still despite the fact she's bordering 28, never finished her degree, has never had a job, and spends most of her time babysitting. We've fallen out of touch because, well, I couldn't keep fighting for her forever. I still worry about her a lot, though.

I'd contact her if there was a reliable way to do so.

My sister is a freshman in college, and her roommate has an absolute psycho helicopter mom.

They're both on the cross country team and very good students. My sister said the roommate never drinks or goes out, but her mom tracks her through phone GPS and will text her constantly asking why she's at such-and-such place.

My sister said one time they were at Walmart getting groceries, and her mom called her to ask why she was at Walmart at 9 pm. Another time, they drove to my other sister's (she lives in the same town) apartment to pick something up, and the girl's mom called and starts yelling and asking why she's been sitting in a parking lot for 20 minutes. My sister said she'll constantly have to send pictures of them at the library to her to prove they're actually studying.

15-y.o. genius girl arrived on our small liberal arts college campus. Her parents made her check in by phone every time she got back from classes, randomly called during the evening to make sure she was still there, had the RA spying on her every move, and picked her up Friday at 2 PM. She said that dad paid the phone bill so he could see every call she made (this was before cell phones or the internet).

She loved poetry. We had a poetry slam on Wednesday nights at the student union cafe. She wanted to go, but they feared she would become too passionate in public. She took a risk and went anyway; they happened to call five minutes before she got back, and then kept calling until she answered. She told them she'd been in the bathroom, but then they started calling her friends (they'd made her highlight names in a campus student directory) and in just a few minutes they got a well-meaning fellow student to admit she was at the poetry night.

Her mom and dad showed up before midnight to move her back home. We never saw her again.

I teach high school and occasionally college. [In] one teacher-parent meeting for a high school student, the mother mentioned her other kid was enrolled at a local university, and that she (the mother) was also enrolling in the same classes to ensure her daughter did her work.

A guy at my high school last year wrote some college application essays, and after his parents read them they kicked him out of his own account, changed the password, and rewrote them entirely.

My parents tracked my phone (this even continued in college), read my texts, emails and social media, searched my room weekly and sometimes my body. Theyd take my door often. I was a straight A student that never did anything wrong before they started that. Started acting out some and developed really bad anorexia because it was the only thing I had control over in my life. My dad was also abusive but this was their helicopter side. Now I can't wait to move across the country next summer and be far away from them.

Edit: just to clarify. I am not sick anymore. My anorexia went away when I left the house and went to college

Edit: wow I thought this would be a minor case compared to others. Apparently not

I remember this one private that showed up to his first duty station with his mother in tow. She came along to help get him settled and make sure everything went smoothly and ensure his sergeants were nice to him. I remember first formation she was behind him in the parking lot telling him to stand up straight, etc, wanted to speak with someone about diet and sleeping schedule.

So kid gets assigned to my squad and First Sergeant tells me to deal with it. Long story short I smoked the s**t out of that kid. Like absolutely wrecked him making his mom watch the whole time. She's crying and threatening me "just you wait until so-and-so finds out what you did, I'm friends with random-name-drop." I kept telling her I'll stop scuffing up Jr as soon as you leave and never come back. She apparently sold her house and purchased one near the base expecting Jr to come live with her. Application for off post housing denied. We never banned mom from coming on post but there was a standing order that if anyone in the platoon saw Jr's mom I would smoke the s**t out of him. Finally she got it into her head that she was f*****g up her kids life and moved back home.

I can't even imagine what that kids life would have been like if he'd gone to college first. Where would he be if he hadn't had a caring and compassionate NCO such as myself?

Edit: I tracked Jr down on Facebook. Look's like he made it up to E5 before his contract ended and didn't reenlist. He declined to move back home with mother. He's now married with a kid on the way.

My ex girlfriend. When we first started dating her mom would call and text her every 15 mins to see what we were doing. If she didn't answer immediately she'd text me to see what we were doing. We went swimming once and she had to leave the pool every 10 mins to text her mom. Her parents were almost inconsolably crying the week leading up to her 18th brithday. Her mom had told me she didn't plan on letting her move out until her late 20s and when she did move out she'd have to call everyday and visit her 5 times a week. My gf had been bullied severely in high school and her parents were more than happy to let her drop out so she could be at home more. When I encouraged her to get her GED and helped her study her parents were upset because getting her GED meant she might be able to go to college and move out (she did pass her GED). Her parents cleaned up after her, made all her meals, and religiously tracked her money even after she turned 18. They made sure she couldn't do basic household tasks like laundry so that she couldn't move out. Once at my house we were watching a movie and neither had our phone on us. Her mom showed up at my house to check on us. They even monitored her food. She'd get her steak well done and I once had her try it medium rare to see if she liked it. She did but her parents scolded her for it. I ended things with her becuase although I loved her I couldn't handle her parents and just couldn't ever see myself married to her in the future with parents like that.

When I was 15 the parents of a kid in my school year drove 7 hours to save their pride and joy from watching Casino Royale on the coach's on-board DVD player driving back from a school trip. The best part about it is that he must have asked our teacher what the film was in advance and then told his mum.

One lady we had over was shocked that my (at the time) 9-year-old younger brother could dress himself and brush his teeth.

Claiming that he was “so mature” and that her daughter, age 9, couldn’t do anything like that.

My mom immediately realized it was helicopter parenting and had a long talk with her. I hope that little girl has learned how to dress herself and do lots of other basics now...

In my first college course there was a 16 year old in my class and their parent sat through the entire lecture next to them. The professor expressed his concern about her taking up a seat for a student and the mom immediately snapped at him about how she was paying his salary by enrolling her kid there and she deserved "respect". Poor kid made no friends in that class.

When I was 14, I helped my sister film a project for her and her teammates when they were in the 6th grade. They had to do a music video and switch the lyrics of a song to have it be science related, so they chose Survivor's "The Eye of the Tiger" and turned it into "The Bones of our Body".

Everybody came to our house and we shot the music video in one shot in our garage. One of the teammates was this REALLY quiet kid, but still made the effort to sing along. When everybody's parents came to pick them up, Shy Guy's mother INSISTED on watching the video. It wasn't ready of course, I still had to edit it. But nope! She ended up seeing the whole thing damn thing through the camcorder screen...and she didn't like it. She told me to film it again and to make sure Shy Guy came out more (when some of the teammates left already!).

So everybody had to return to our house and film again because of a crazy lady. Oh yeah! And she stood behind the camera to make SURE that Shy Guy came out. WTF! She was a known psycho, so we figured it was best to do it again to shut her up.

I knew a girl in college whose mother would frequently drive 11 hours to the campus to clean her dorm for her. I remember having a conversation with the daughter where she mentioned she's never held an actual job before. I raised my eyebrows and said something like, "Wow, really? Not even at McDonald's or something like that?" And her mom got defensive with me and said, "She's only 19!" Her mom would build her up like she was gonna do great things after college and it carried into the girl's ego that she was special, but she didn't know how to do the bare minimum of taking care of herself and was still playing with children's toys at 20 years old.

EDIT: Well aware that sometimes teens don't get a job until college for multiple reasons: want to focus on schoolwork, theater rehearsals or sports practices, can't get access to a place to work, etc. This was none of those. She was bragging that she never had a job because I was exhausted from a long day I had had at my internship that day. Side note: her mom was being snarky at me about my having an internship, and I had told her "it's in our curriculum that we need at least one to graduate." Her eyes got wide and she starts yelling at her daughter why didn't she mention that? She probably could have helped her find an internship, and the girl just rolled her eyes and gave some answer along the lines of "because I don't wanna."

And the thing about the children's toys: it wasn't like someone playing with Lego or play doh as a break from class work. This was someone that would shirk schoolwork altogether because she wanted to play with her dolls on the floor. Sorry for thinking that's a little odd.

I have a younger cousin who at 15, had still never been allowed to take a sex ed class, go to a highschool dance, eat school lunch, have friends over, go to a friends house, or take part in after school activities. For example, The step mother (not my real aunt, I refuse to aknowledge her as family even), heard my cousin watching the Big Bang Theory. Some character says the word "procreated" and the sod flys off the handle about what a filthy show it is. Cousin started dating a guy against her step moms wishes, and due to literally not understanding how sex worked, got pregnant and is going to have a baby. My cousin is mentally maybe 11 or 12, still watches barbie movies, wears princess dresses, and is having a child. Literally helicoptered over until it absolutely backfired.

When my friend took her sons to a nursery, the mother of a 6-month old baby had provided them with a multi-page manual of how to care for him. I can't quite remember the details, but she had either written out different types of crying phonetically with a chart of what each type "meant," or may have stood in the office giving her own demonstration of each cry.

It did have the benefit of making my friend, who had felt a bit guilty about returning to work, feel like an entirely normal and reasonable mother by comparison.