Recently, I read a newspaper story about a woman who was convicted of helping her daughter and her daughter’s friends break into some girl’s house to terrorize her–it seems that the girl and her daughter had shared some kind of unpleasant history together. This story was of course shocking and disturbing, but not for the reasons you might think: not because it was so terrible that an adult would involve themselves in childish squabbles to such a criminal extent (although it was), but because my reaction to it was: that could be me one day. I hate to say it, but as my children get older, such examples of extreme overprotectiveness start to strike me as less and less bizarre all the time.
I remember when the story came out about the Texas mother who tried to hire a hit man to knock off her daughter’s cheerleading competition. When I first heard this story I was shocked, appalled, and even a little bit amused; I couldn’t believe that someone would ever go to such extremes over something so trivial. Now, however, when I look back at that story, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it wasn’t so trivial after all. Maybe it wasn’t just a case of one girl not being good enough to make the team and her mother’s outraged overreaction; maybe the truth of the matter was that those other girls were being really mean; maybe she really was the best, and the others just wouldn’t let her in; maybe…they had it coming. And that’s when I start to scare myself.
I’ve always been proud of the fact that I’m not a “helicopter parent”; I don’t hover over my children’s every move, trying to smooth out the little bumps in life’s road for them. They’ve always walked or biked to school; I’ve never interfered with their playground squabbles; and anytime they have ever come home complaining of unfair treatment at the hands of a teacher my reaction has always been: “Well, if you didn’t deserve it this time then I sure you did deserve it–and got away with it–another time”. In other words, as much as possible, I have let them be. Imagine my consternation, then, when I first realized that I was becoming something even worse than a helicopter parent: I was becoming a felon-in-waiting parent. It’s true: while I’m sure that I would never stoop to writing their college entrance essays for them, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t stoop to stalking the college entrance examiner.
There is only one word to explain how I feel when my kids are getting the short end of the stick: feral. Wolf mothers have nothing on me. This, I think, is an instinct even worse (and much less civilized) than the mere overprotectiveness of the helicopter parent. This is not the instinct to intercede on my child’s behalf; it is the instinct to annihilate.
That’s how it was the other day at soccer, when my son Clyde was reprimanded by the opposing team’s coach for being too rough–this after that same coach’s players had spent an entire game being too rough themselves. What, I found myself thinking, is this guy doing yelling at MY kid?
As I watched this travesty of justice unfold from the sidelines it became clear to me that I had three options: one, I could let it go, and explain to Clyde later that sometimes, life isn’t fair; two, I could intercede, and point out to the opposing coach just how myopic his refereeing was; or three, I could kill him.
In the end, I went with option number one. Not because it was the right thing to do, though; I just didn’t want anybody to be able to place the two of us together in case I later on decided to go with option number three.