Stalking one’s child is hard and expensive work, but these parental units were willing to pay high costs just to feel closer to their kids. Now for most parents, watching their child flourish into their own person is the most rewarding part of the job. Unfortunately, some folks just won’t give their kids (or themselves) a break. Turn off the parental controls to these whacky stories of the most extreme helicopter parents.
1. Protecting Her from the Dangers of Verse
A 15-year-old 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.
2. Not Without My Mother
I had a friend in high school whose mom was terrible. Every time there was a party (and, mind you, most of my friends were Mormon so they were supervised, appropriate parties), she would come just to make sure her daughter wasn't getting into trouble. She wouldn't let her watch PG-13 movies (even at 17), had a strict curfew, and became a constant and judgmental fixture at every social event. One time she called me a sleaze because she saw me kiss a boy at a school dance (she wasn't chaperoning, she was just there to watch her daughter).
The best story though was one time my friends and I went to my house to watch a scary movie. Sheltered friend comes. Helicopter mom shows up. My dear mother distracted her in the kitchen so my friend could have a little peace and just be a teenager. My mom later said she had no idea what to talk to her about, so they talked about cats for two hours.
My mom is a saint.
3. Give Me the Plans or Else!
I worked at a science museum that had a hands-on area for kids. The aim of the game was for the child to solve a problem by themselves. Like "can you get x to do y." They make something, test it, and figure out how to make it better. One day, a woman comes in practically dragging her five-year-old son. She sits him down beside me and starts poking me on the shoulder as I'm talking to another family and says something ridiculous.
"Tell my son what to do," she says, standing over him. I tell the family to hold on a sec, as I explain the challenge to the newcomer. The whole point is to work autonomously, so it was alright, and I was used to working with a few rude/pushy parents, so I wasn't surprised. I tell the kid the prompt, tell him he had a wide range of materials...
But no. The woman wants me to tell him every step of the process. "Tell him the answer! Tell him the answer!" she says repeatedly, grabbing his hands to make him fold paper, or reaching for my own. I start getting mad. "Ma'am, the goal here is to learn the scientific method. Make a hypothesis, test it, make conclusions and try again."
"But you already KNOW the answer," she says, "Tell my son! Or I'm calling your manager!" I don't even have a manager. In the meantime, the poor kid is looking so embarrassed. Every time he tries to start something for himself, his mom reaches for his hands and tells him to wait for me to tell him what to do. The woman was so afraid of him failing when the whole point was to learn from one's mistakes.
I'm so worried about how he'll deal with mistakes growing up, with her around.
4. Who Better to Tell My Story Than The Creators?
A guy at my high school last year wrote some college application essays. After his parents read them, they kicked him out of his own account, changed the password, and rewrote them entirely.
5. The Original Classmates
I used to teach/lecture at a university. I had one poor homeschooled student whose mother insisted on attending the university with him. She enrolled in the same course and used to follow him around to observe his social interactions, and dictate to him who he should be friends with. He had limited social skills as it was, and this made it much, much worse.
In the end, I put them in different lecture streams so that they had to attend separate lectures and labs. She spat the dummy and took me before the Dean to make me put them back together, but the Dean was actually pretty happy with what I had done. A few weeks later, the student came and thanked me personally. So everything worked out!
6. For the Motherland
Military recruiting—the helicopter parents who would try to have us recruit their kid without their consent were staggering. Parents would call to make appointments for testing and were furious when we said we had to speak to the kid. If the kid is a minor, the parents have to sign a waiver, and at that point, we can no longer give any information to the parent, so some parents would call and pose as their child in order to get test results, book appointments, and so on.
Some parents even tried to attend the testing with their child and were furious when we said no. Then, invariably, when little Johnny got turned down for being a jerk pump with no initiative, we'd get an earful from Mommy about how their child is the most special human being on the earth. Those were the fun times when I could say, "Have you stopped to consider that Johnny isn't getting a job because he has no initiative or desire to be here based on a parent pushing him into a career he doesn't want, rather than him being allowed to make his own choices?"
Usually didn't go over well, and then I'd hang up.
7. Double-O-Never
When I was 15 years old, the parents of a kid in my school year made a seven-hour trip to save their pride and joy from watching Casino Royale on the coach's onboard DVD player while 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.
8. Telephone Game Over
I work as over the phone tech support for a public university. During the months of December and April/May is when I get the most helicopter parents. Each student has a security question attached to their account, but this one parent was determined to get into his daughter's accounts. The only problem was: he kept giving incorrect answers to the question.
No correct answer = No account info given/comprehensive assistance given. The call lasted for at least thirty minutes and included, but was not limited to: Threatening lawsuits, excessive swearing, several pieces of office stationery being slammed into the caller’s desk over and over. The call finally ended with a swift pass to my supervisor, who just repeated everything that I had said. Needless to say, as one of my first calls in telephone support, this was definitely one to remember.
I understand that if you pay the bills you want some sort of access, but all that we can legally give is joint access to the bill pay site.
9. Exit, Stage Mom Left
I ran a kid's theater program, so who wasn't a helicopter parent? I had one kid who had a leading role two years in a row, but didn't get a lead the third year she was in our program—she just wasn't the right fit for any of the parts (we were doing "Fiddler on the Roof Jr." and her onstage personality was very "diva").
But we did take one of the smaller roles (named townsperson) and divide it into three and gave that girl one of the three. The mom came storming in and demanded to know why her daughter didn't get a lead, and how dare we give her a made-up role, and how come a girl who had just joined the program got a lead (because that girl was a perfect fit for the part).
It was just ridiculous, and the kid ended up dropping out of the show.
10. The Father of All Career Coaches
I was a manager of a bagel store. I had an interview with this one kid, I think he was about 16. His dad came to the interview and basically answered every single question I asked the kid. At the end of the interview, I turned to the dad and said, "You're hired.” Look on his face was priceless. The kid laughed his butt off.
Since quite a few people have asked: the kid came back for an interview on his own a few days later, and I hired him, but ultimately it didn't work out. He was a nice kid, and reasonably smart, but had absolutely no work ethic. He couldn't perform even simple tasks really. I have always assumed that this was due to his parents pampering him.
He only lasted a short time (I think it was about two months).
11. Just Follow the Appendix
When my friend took her sons to a nursery, the mother of a six-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.
21. The Playground Isn’t a Place for Playing Around
I was at a playground with my daughter. Two parents were following their similarly-aged kid around everywhere, staying within a foot of him at all times. The entire time, they were saying things like "don’t do this, don’t do that, be careful, this is too dangerous, don’t fall, let me help you, you’re going to fall" etc. etc.
1. Their constant blabbering was annoying the hell out of me and 2. Let your kid be a kid! He will not die going down a four-foot slide, I promise.
13. The Mother of All Reshoots
When I was 14, I helped my sister film a project for her and her teammates when they were in the sixth 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 he 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 darn 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. What the heck! She was a known psycho, so we figured it was best to do it again to shut her up.
14. Killing Them Sweetly
My aunt never let my cousins have any kind of sugar or candy. She told them that it was poison and tasted nasty. One time while our grandma was babysitting them (they were six), she let them have one Capri Sun each. They loved it, saying, "Grammy, sugar actually tastes GOOD!" and threw up shortly after because their stomachs could not handle it.
My cousins are alcoholics now.
15. A Boy on a Mission
Went to youth group with two kids who had the worst helicopter mom. These kids had no muscle mass and were the least athletic kids ever because their parents wouldn't let them play sports. Their mom came to every youth meeting we had (usually just for the youth and the youth leaders). The older kid begged his mom to let him go on a mission trip with us, only to another part of the state, not even out of country. After we all kind of vouched for him and said he'd be taken care, she let him go.
Happy story in the end: he ended up completely coming out of his shell because of that trip. He got super independent and his mom let up after seeing that he could take care of himself.
16. The World is a Contraband Locker
I was 11-13 at the time. I had a friend on the swim team who was also around that age. His parents were the most controlling people I had ever seen. His mother looked like the head of a Catholic girls’ school that punishes students for singing. We all used to play Nintendo DS games during meets. He just watched over our shoulders because if he touched a gaming console he would be punished.
His parents always made him wear the same clothes every day. Tan khakis, white shirt, dark blue sweater vest. Every day. I once got him a T-shirt for his birthday. He gave it back saying that he wasn’t allowed to wear it. He was homeschooled. Pretty sure his family spoke ecclesiastical Latin at home. It was freaking weird.
17. She Lost the Game of Thrones
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.
18. A Family of Mediums
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 five, my grandpa bought me a Transformer and before I was allowed to play with it, he had to make a two-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.
19. A Family Has No Room for Three People
The mom of a former coworker of mine. He was 27 or 28, and his mom didn't approve the woman he was dating, so he kept dating her in secret. He looked really in love with her (GF not so much, but seemed happy). Eventually, his mom started calling me and a couple of other coworkers to check if her son was still dating that woman, so we lied to cover him.
After a year or so of this secret relationship, the girlfriend got pregnant. My coworker proposed, and they started planning a small wedding. When the mom found out she went ballistic. She forced him out of the engagement. He literally broke up with the future mother of his child because his mom said so. All of this happened 10 years ago, I still talk with the GF because I was friends with her. She is living with another guy; her daughter is nine years old and never knew her biological dad.
I have no idea (or interest of knowing) what happened with my former coworker, if he is still living with his mom or what happened.
20. A Family Stalking Is Fun
A friend's parents are hyper-controlling. While he was on a date, his sister called the parents because she was filling out the FAFSA but was stuck. Instead of saying, "Call your brother," Mom drove 2 1/2 hours to their college town, tracked him down on his date, and then brought him (but not the date) to the sister's apartment to do it for her.
Mom also came to the town when the sister said she saw his motorcycle parked in front of someone's house after dark. It was not his motorcycle. It was just another shiny red motorcycle. The helicopter parent seemed to have influenced a helicopter sister.
21. Bubble Baby
I once knew a woman who was a germaphobe. I don't mean that she was just a really clean person. She was, but I'm guessing she could've had some kind of OCD/anxiety disorder. She had a two-year-old who loved to play outside, but she wouldn't let him touch the ground directly. She would literally put the poor kid in a kind of hamster ball type fortress and then put him on the ground.
He was crawling around like a gerbil without ever touching anything. I don't know where they are now, but I hope that kid is okay.
22. Hard to Stomach This Kind of Surveillance
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. They’d 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. Just to clarify. I am not sick anymore. My anorexia went away when I left the house and went to college.
23. A Full Courseload of Problems at Gone
Working summer orientation for my old community college, and we have new students register for classes towards the end of the session. Counselors are there to help with class selection. This one mom was literally hovering over her son telling him which classes to choose, and completely ignoring the counselor's advice. Eventually, she just had her son stand up. She proceeded to sit down and she herself started registering her son for his classes.
I tried to intervene, letting her know that we ask that the student register themselves and that he'll be doing online registration for the rest of his college career. I was told to screw off (in less pleasant words). Later I pulled him aside and told him to change his password and swap into a class more appropriate for his placement exams.
It was this incident that triggered us to design a parent orientation to keep them away from their kids. Welcome to adulthood, lil bro!
24. There’s Someone in My Bed but She’s No Goldilocks
While working at new student orientation in college, I was told a story from a previous year. The parents who attended the orientation were housed separately from the students. One mom wanted to stay with her daughter and so she straight up took the bed of another student. The mom told the student she can find somewhere else to sleep.
The student, not knowing what to do, ended up sleeping in a chair in the common area of the dorm.
25. A Nightmare in Shining Armor
A mom came with her kid to whine about a (deserved) poor grade. The "kid" was a junior in college. Mom was not happy when I informed her I couldn't and wouldn't talk to parents. And by "not happy" I mean "lost her mind and was escorted out by campus security." The student was mortified, of course, even came by to apologize.
I was basically like, "Let's both just pretend that never happened, m'kay, here's what you should work on for the next exam.”
26. Don’t Shoot the Registrar
I work at an admissions front counter for a university, so I get helicopter parents all the time over the phone, but I had a mom that had me laughing over the phone because of how ridiculous she was. Let's call her Susan for reference. At first, she was normal, asking about general admissions processes and what are the requirements.
However, where she messed up was when she admitted she did the application for him because "he is a boy and you know how boys can be, so I just did it for him." Then she started to fly off the walls. She asked if the campus was open because she wanted to visit her son EVERY SINGLE DAY since they live 15 minutes away from the main campus.
Susan tried making herself not sound crazy by sliding in her bringing him baked goods and home cooked meals, but I know she just wants to pester her child. There was another talk about how she wanted to get access to his student account to see his grades. I told her that she was not going to be allowed to get that access because her child will be considered an adult and the student has to give HER permission by filling out a FERPA form. She wanted to know how and where to get those documents ASAP.
As far as social life, Susan asked if there were parties on campus. It's a college, of course there are going to be parties. The worst part is that she asked if they are supervised....by PARENTS!!!! This is where I couldn't help but laugh because why did she think that this was a high school setting. Susan then followed up with, "Well, how will I know where he is going or if he gets in trouble?"
I said, very casually, "Ma'am if your student decides to do something illegal and gets caught by campus police and gets arrested, you'll be getting that phone call." And she had nothing else to say. :)
27. Stranger Danger Would Be Preferable
My son told me about this one: Fifth grade overnight trip to a nature center. Kid's mom went (she was the only non-teacher to go), had a complete meltdown when she was told that her kid would be sleeping in a cabin with other kids and not her...she was told this before the trip as well. Four teachers per cabin, basically overnight school.
He said she basically spent the entire night outside watching the cabin. She really creeped everyone out. Man, the rants she went on on Facebook...at least her friends and family called her out on her nonsense, imagine quite a few people got blocked that day.
28. The Nest is Never Far
I'm in college, living off campus with my 20-year-old roommate. She has to be in contact with her mom every single day. If she doesn't answer within a few hours, her mom gets extremely anxious about where she is and what she's doing. Her mom has called me more than once to see where she is. Usually, I'm within 40 feet of my roommate and she's just doing homework or watching cable.
It's ridiculous that she's being monitored like a hawk when she's an adult.
29. An Aid to Whom?
Ugh, this one kid I knew from elementary-high school. The mom didn't have a job and somehow managed to be at his school EVERY SINGLE DAY, watching over him. In elementary school, she was a volunteer Teacher's Aid every year, which meant she would help out in whatever class he was in. By middle school, she was the head of the PTA and although not necessary, she was at the campus almost every day.
She would just wander around and eventually, the school stopped caring and she could do whatever she wants. She would randomly pop into one of his classes and just observe or come up to him to hang out with him at lunch. The kid was 24/7 stressed the hell out, his whole body always clenched up. His mom put IMMENSE pressure on him to do well in school both academically and behavior wise.
He had an extremely hard time making friends and eventually he was bullied to the point of randomly getting beat up. Made it to the first year of high school before he had to transfer to another school. It's her fault, all she wanted was for him to be smart and polite to teachers and he never got to learn how to just be a guy and make friends.
30. My Child is Independence Intolerant
This is my sister's experience, but she taught kindergarten for a while and she had a kid whose mother wouldn't let her play outside if it was below 70 degrees. She told the school she was allergic to dairy, but then admitted she lied about that because she "couldn't trust that the school wouldn't serve her spoiled milk," so she thought it would be easier to just say she was allergic.
Also, the kid was coincidentally sick and had to stay home from school on every single field trip.
31. Let’s Sleep on a Few of These Regulations
My sons befriended the "new" kid in middle school. He was homeschooled through elementary school years, but his parents wanted him to interact with kids. He’s a good kid. Smart, but guarded and sheepish—though he got along great with my sons. They want to have a sleepover. He gets dropped off and his mother hands me a mind-blowing list.
Had to be four pages of his routine, dos and don’ts and everything (Adam is not to have anything to drink after the hour of 8 pm. He needs to brush his teeth with the toothbrush we sent him with. He needs to be asleep by blah blah blah). I have three kids. I can keep a 12-year-old kid alive for 20 hours without a list. She would text me nonstop.
I felt bad for the kid. I let him know, "Listen if you bend a few of these rules, I'll never tell your mom if you won't," and he had this huge smile. I'm not sure what kind of people helicopter parents think they're creating, but it can't be a fun one, that's for sure.
32. Mama’s Girl
In college, a girl's mom stayed in her room with her the first week of our freshman year. Went to classes with her, ate with her, and attended our dorm meeting, introducing herself as "Crystal's Mommy.” She finally went home, and Crystal had obviously never learned to do anything on her own. Her roommate dated a guy in my floor and would tell us about her daily, multiple calls home.
She didn't know how to do laundry, so mommy paid her roommate to do it for her. By midterm, Crystal was failing all her classes and had basically just given up going to class as it was "too hard." Again, mommy showed up, stayed two weeks, talked to her professors, then pulled her out of school. I'm curious what she's doing now, hopefully she broke out on her own and gained some independence.
33. The Apple Isn’t Allowed to Fall Far from the Tree
This girl I went to high school with! We rode at the same barn (her mom was co-owner). She and her sister were the typical "horse girls,” and emotionally stunted because their mother treated them like they were five or six years younger than they really were. Like I'm talking sparkly-glittery little girl clothes in middle school, character backpacks in high school, etc.
The older sister went to community college AND THE MOM ENROLLED WITH HER. Attended all the same classes, same professors, etc. When the older one went onto vet school MOM MOVED 1,000 MILES to be with her. She wasn't allowed to live in the dorms, because mommy rented an apartment for them! How insane is that! I honestly still can't really believe it.
34. Being a Helicopter Parent is Expensive Work
We have a neighborhood newspaper, and a real estate agent with kids always writes an editorial on the first page. Her youngest kid is going off to college this fall, and this article was about what to do in the "empty nest" phase. This woman's advice was: "This might be a new and quiet chapter of your life. One college-parent activity that's growing in popularity is buying a condo near the campus. For some parents, this offers the chance to visit their fledglings while having a stable and familiar place to stay."
How about parents not do that? If my parents had followed me across state lines to college...just no.
35. My Lost Boy
My best friend's mom. They live 10 minutes away from me, and my friend is REALLY bad with directions. He drove to my house and got lost, so it took him like 45 minutes. After like 30 minutes, his mom calls me and is sobbing because he hadn't checked in with her. He's 26.
36. Every Percentage Counts
This one dude came in to talk to me about his son's test scores. The son was in my second-year university course, and the dad, who was a professor in the subject I was teaching, thought I was too hard on his son. We reviewed the midterm together; in the end I gave the kid back one mark, so he went from like a 73 to a 74%...
Seriously cannot imagine what it was like for that kid growing up.
37. The Original Ball and Chain
Until I was 18 years old, I wasn't allowed to listen to anything other than classical or country music, I wasn't allowed to wear baggy clothes, and I wasn't allowed to wear any style of skater shoes, or any brand name shirts or any band merch. My mother would go through all my stuff when I was at work, snap CDs, cut up shirts and jeans into a load of pieces and throw them away, and replace them with her approved items.
Five days before I turned 18, my girlfriend at the time took me to do my driving test, and my mom cut it up when she heard me on the phone telling my friend that I had passed it. Flash forward to today, I'm 36, moved to England, got married, quite a severe case of misanthropy, no interest in having kids, I'm covered in tattoos, got a great job, and most importantly, an amazing wife who had a completely opposite upbringing but the same view on everything as I do, also an awesome job.
We told the family to mind their own business and got married in Vegas six years ago and will live happily ever after with our cats.
38. Daddy’s Little Secret
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.
39. Her Anxieties Never Held Water
My grandmother (who lived with us) did not let me walk up and down stairs, and I was also not allowed to let shower water hit my chest. She believed that if I either fell on the stairs or did them too quickly, I would die. She also told me that if shower water pounded on my chest it would destroy my heart and it would be my fault if I had a heart attack and died. Both of these were enforced rules (amongst 10 million others) in my house.
She did have a kid who had died of heart problems, but the shower water thing is only an instruction for like RIGHT AFTER open heart surgery. Jesus.
40. How About You Quarterback-Off, Dad
Probably an acquaintance of mine. I have posted about it on Reddit before a couple of times, but he is pretty bad, so I'll share it again. This guy knows that his son is going to be a great NFL quarterback. The kid turned 10 recently and is a decent player, but his father has him work with different trainers and spend hours each day practicing.
He takes vitamins, has a special diet, and isn't allowed to play other sports because his dad wants him to focus completely on football and doesn't want to risk an injury playing another sport that would sideline him for football. He can't have sleepovers or do any normal kid things. I know for a fact that the kid has told his father that he doesn't want to play anymore, but the dad doesn't care.
He says that as a parent, he has to do what is best for his kid. My sons play sports too and they don't always want to go to practice, so I understand making them stick with something they signed up for. My kids know that they have to finish out a season, but I am perfectly fine if they don't want to sign up the next season.
I just don't understand why someone would continue to sign their kid up for something they clearly do not want to do. It's a situation that I can't see ending well.
41. I’m Not Touching That One
I worked in a school for kids with behavioral issues. These kids were typically aggressive, and some would elope from the building. Parents usually signed a release saying that we could touch their kids for restraint purposes. You have to remember that these kids would be out for blood during one of their crisis episodes. It wasn't done for punishment, only safety.
Well, we had one parent who wouldn't sign it because little Johnny "didn't really need to be there." Since we couldn't touch him, he could beat up on the teachers and nothing could legally be done. We would just move out of the way. One day, he decided to leave the building and run down the road. We called the police and said we had a kid who left the building, and we couldn't get him back.
Mom was notified, and Johnny was brought back in a cop car. She was irate over the situation and took him home for the rest of the day because she was scared that he was traumatized.
42. Putting This Crowd on Ice
On my first date (which ended up being a "friend date" but that's a different story), the girl brought her mom. The mom bought both of us ice cream (even though I offered to buy it) and stayed with us for like 10 minutes before leaving for 20 or so minutes and calling her daughter telling her she had to go. That was something.
For everyone asking, this was a few months ago, I was 18 and she was 17. We were talking for a few months prior to this, and I'm fairly certain her mom knew about me. The girl told me to meet her at this ice cream place and that she would have her mom drop her off as she couldn't drive yet. Her mom came with her inside the store, I introduced myself and thought she would go.
She didn't. She bought ice cream for everyone and it was very awkward. I don't know why she did it, but it happened, and I never went on a friend date with that girl again.
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