So I read this article in the NY Times this morning, about high-maintenance parents who send their kids "away" to camp, only to bombard the camp with phone calls every day (sometimes more than once a day) about asinine things, and basically freaking out about their child the entire time:
Dear Parents - Please Relax, It’s Just Camp - NYTimes.com
This kind of behavior pisses me off. I don't care how rich you are--if you are sending your kid to camp, you leave that kid at camp to have fun, make friends, sometimes go through shit, learn how to fend for him/herself, and grow as an individual--you don't stick your bloody nose in the kid's life every frickin' day, which to me defeats the entire purpose of the experience.
What do you all think? I used to think that only Asian immigrant parents were this overprotective (with my mother as a reference point), but clearly I was wrong--it's a disease that afflicts parents of all backgrounds, lol. I don't even know why the camp bothers appeasing them with a "Parent Liaison," though I guess it's easy enough to explain--happy parents = more money coming in. It just disappoints me.
When ktsp and I have kids, we'll be sending them to camps that BAN parents from this kind of behavior, if there are any left by that point. It's this kind of shit that contributed to my frustration with high school teaching--not the kids, but the effin' parents. Parents of 16-18 year old individuals, who had clearly been interfering in their childrens' lives all along, and would most likely continue this behavior well into their kids' college years... and who saw absolutely no problem with what they were doing. I mean, give me a break here. Is this America? How were these parents raised? Where did they get the idea that this was a healthy thing to be doing?