The college dropout rate

There are many reasons we dropout of college before graduating. Here are some of the psychological reasons I've explored in this blog:

1. You may be feeling labeled as a "defective student" when you actually love to learn what interests you and gives you motivation.
2. You may be angry about exorbitant tuition increases that charge more for the same old useless courses.
3. You may feel deeply misunderstood and neglected by the administration's obvious attempts to improve student retention and success rates.
4. You may have realized that an expensive diploma and transcript does not accurately tell future employers how well you'll really do in a new job.
5. You may have discovered that your college is mismanaged and wasting your money on expenditures unrelated to delivering a quality education.
6. You may been tried to change how you're getting taught, graded or advised and hit a wall of bureaucratic stagnation.
7. You may have become aware of free online course materials that suggest college courses should stop lecturing you and delivering content you can get online.
8. You may not be getting the proactive support you need from the college to accompany your great attitude and determination to graduate.
9. You may have already learned a lot on your own like computer hackers who learn more when they're not getting taught in classrooms.
10. You may have become extremely techno-savvy and find college expects you to be overly passive and dependent on the techno-newbie instructor.
11. You may have become consumed by your focus on dropping out and have lost sight of where to be headed.
12. You may have become an expert in what you don't want to experience and not yet defined what you really desire.
13. You may be unwilling to prepare for the future as if it will look like the business world and economy your parents have worked in all these years.
    
14. You may be getting forced to take a stance against staying in college because you're getting pressured by those who won't admit they might be wrong.
15. You may be the fallout of a closed system that cannot adjust itself with feedback about the unintentional harm it's doing to people.
16. You may have lost your dignity will trying to keep up with an oppressive college workload and are considering drastic action to stop acting like a machine.
17. You may be bored by college because you welcome tougher problems to solve, bigger challenges and opportunities to make a real difference.
18. You may be defying the exploitation of a captive market for college diplomas that manipulates parents/students into paying big bucks for scams and rip-offs.
19. You may be suffering from high levels of anxiety that is undermining your ability to concentrate, think clearly and make new connections in your mind.
20. You may be challenging the assumptions and foregone conclusions about college educations with your own creativity and critical thinking.
21. You may getting protected from the Internet that you're parents perceive as dangerous and finding their advice to be wrong for your generation.
22. You may be realizing that all your reasons to stay in college seem bogus and your sense of getting a real education cannot happen in college.
23. You may have fallen through the cracks of the big impersonal system that failed to transition you when you were an incoming student.
24. You may be part of your college's plan to overbook enrollment and only accommodate the survival of the fittest students.
25. You may be getting stereotyped by a system that cannot hack the pressures on it to change -- as someone who cannot hack academic pressures.
26. You may be entangled with advice from helicopter parents who are messing with your mind, self confidence and your own ability to take risks.

Manufacturing helicopter parents

When humans like us morph into helicopters, something has gone terribly wrong. Natural processes of maturation and character development have been sabotaged. Inherent abilities fail to develop and desperate conduct fills in the gaps. Hovering helicopter parents seem to be machined products of inhuman factories, rather than blossoming, fruitful creations of nature. Here's some of what's missing and mechanized in us humans who get unnaturally manufactured and end up as helicopter parents:

We naturally relate to others who are easily fascinating to us. We respect ourselves enough to respect them too. We know ourselves to be unique and allow them the same space, permission and patience. However, when a previous generation has seemed dangerous to us, we only know about taking hostages and being taken prisoner by others. We have no appreciation of living, feeling humans. We deal with other's as "it", objects and things. We cannot handle them being unhappy with us, having different needs or having their own lives to live. Those we can tightly control seem like unchanging proof of our own legitimacy, solid evidence of our worth and polished trophies of our accomplishments. We show them off, want to be seen with them and reassure ourselves with their presence.

We naturally don't get along with everyone. We understand ourselves well enough to accurately assess who we'll find compatible. Our "range of tolerable diversity" is broad enough to enjoy others' differences from us when we have enough in common to feel compassionate toward them. We maintain healthy boundaries from those who expect too much or show no respect to us. When we've been used as toys, possessions or trophies by parents, all of this goes haywire. We don't understand ourselves well enough to have a clue about others. We're attracted to those who do more harm than good to us. We cling desperately to others as if we won't survive any breathing room in the so-called relationship. We let people walk all over us when we're in danger of losing their attention. We lash out at them when they speak their mind or reveal their true feelings. We act out how excessively vulnerable we constantly feel.

We naturally get energized by our own accomplishments. We're fueled by challenges and enjoy taking risks. We find it pays to be adventurous, exploratory and open to new experiences. It seems we're never done learning about: ourselves, what we're capable of and what has changed in our world. When parents are living their lives vicariously through us, we feel drained all the time. Being around authority figures sucks us dry of ambition, self satisfaction and confidence. We cannot revive ourselves in natural ways. Our need for more energy is insatiable. We resort to artificial stimulants, thrill seeking and dangers. We act like losers since it feels there's no way to win that we find really energizing.

We naturally get better at anything we practice at for long stretches of time. We also discover what talents, gifts and traits we've got in us to cultivate. We find out what captures our imagination, and give us motivation without even trying. We get inspirations for what to do next and become amazed at our timing, good fortune and fate. When we've been machine tooled to perfection by obsessive parents, we've only been slotted for a career they had in mind. We're living under their imposed expectations, standards and rules. We fail to measure up adequately unless we're superhuman and robotic. We identify with being deviant, defective and deficient. We cannot win and always disappoint those who expect too much. We suffer from "arrested development" that fails to improve with time and effort. We bemoan our fate. unfortunate timing and desperate situations.

We all have the potential to be living, breathing humans free of what's missing and burdensome to us. It's a challenge every butterfly faces when it's time to emerge from the cocoon.

Multi-generational helicopter parents

It's very likely that hovering helicopter parents were raised by hovering helicopter parents. They learned to hover by example, parental expectations and the effects of hovering on the next generation. It's also likely that the children getting hovered over in college will become hovering helicopter parents themselves. The multi-generational problem offers no solution at the level of changing one person's over-attentiveness.

Children grow up with their feet on the ground when both parents act like adults. The kids get their dependency needs met by authority figures who can be depended upon reliably. The kids realize they can trust the grown-ups to provide reassuring safety, protection from dangers and intervention in overwhelming situations. The children discover they can get validated, respected and understood by parents who see them clearly, respond respectfully and cultivate their independence. Getting raised around functional adults nourishes their increasing self confidence, fascination with others and the willingness to take risks.

Children cannot find solid ground under their feet when parents act childishly. Instead of getting their dependency needs met, these kids become insatiably starved for attention, validation and reassurances. They harbor major abandonment issues and feel constantly neglected by the slightest indication of distance, detachment or contempt. They realize they can trust no one and remain guarded at all times. They receive too much invalidation, criticism an disrespect to formulate self confidence, fascination with others or the willingness to take risks. They get deprived of encouragement to be independent. They become overly dependent on others in order to feel good about themselves, to stop feeling lonely and to silence their intense self-doubts.

When these kids become parents themselves, their own children become emotionally deprived and misused. The parents exploit their children's dependency to placate their array of insatiable needs. The parents experience no safety, protection from danger or reliable interventions themselves. They cannot provide what's missing in their lives to their offspring. Getting stigmatized for hovering over their kids in college is the least of their problems. The way they feel inside won't go away, ease up or get under control. Playing the part of a hovering helicopter parent provides a viable coping strategy for these emotional wrecks.

Preventing a repeat college experience

I suspect that most hovering and combat helicopter parents are college grads. They know first hand what goes on in college and what good, if any, that attending college did for them. I doubt that more than a few helicopter parents are sending off the first generation of college attendees from their families. The large population of college grads among the helicopter parents suggests they are interfering with the lives of their college kids for what they consider to be very good reasons.

Some may have experienced being needy, insecure and clingy in high school. They found that college did not change those traits, and perhaps made them worse. Others may have been hard to get along with before college due to acting like a bully, control freak or alpha dog. They discovered that college merely reinforced their previous inclinations and justified their looking down on others.

Both kinds of helicopter parents may be saying they learned a lot in college and are putting their kids through higher ed to get the same benefits. Both may imply they learned:

• how to study but not how to really be someone's buddy
• how to get good grades but not how to get deeply understood
• how to party but not how to really partner with another's ambitions and values
• how to hang out with others but not how to chill out by oneself

If this was the case, these parents would want something different for their children. Rather than perpetuate a dysfunctional pattern, they would seek to interfere with it. They may assume that giving them more attention and show of concern will do the trick. They may hope their children will get better at relating to their peers in college if the parents set a good example of staying in touch. They may expect their kids to feel loved and accepted from home which could give their children the basis for making new friends for life.

These grown-ups are likely afraid of what might happen again if they don't play the part of helicopter parents. They will decide what to do with categorical reasoning and dichotomies. They will face clear cut choices of providing either:

• total support or total neglect for their kids
• caring involvement in their lives or cruel abandonment
• proactive efforts to forestall future problems or foolish optimism and negligence
• a show of sincere commitment or mere lip-service to caring for their children's lives

With polarized choices like these, it's easy to predict how persistent the fearful helicopter parents will become.

Shooting down helicopter parents

A week ago I created a Google Alert subscription to monitor other mentions of "helicopter parents" on websites and in blogs. Squidoo has assembled a page with lots of links too. Helicopter parents appear to be under siege everywhere for disabling their kids independence, self reliance and resourcefulness. Helicopter parents are getting framed as "all bad as if no good can come of them". All helicopter parents are assumed to be the same. It's like they are experiencing a ground assault of anti-aircraft missiles aimed at their offensive, airborne positions.

It's fascinating to me there are no voices of "helicopter maintenance and repair technicians". No one is understanding the parents or sensing how to relate to them. They are only seeing what harm they are doing and what justifications exist for shooting them down. To me, this appears as "whirlybirds of a feather flock to together". These numerous critics of helicopter parents bear strong resemblance to combat or hovering kinds of helicopters themselves.

Helicopter parents, who hover over or combat their children in school, have no viable options. Their impulses to handle their own insatiable needs for attention, control, superiority or disguises -- seem relentless, urgent and compulsive. Their outlook remains unchanging because it's locked in by subconscious, emotional baggage. They cannot stop acting needy or bossy even if they wanted to change. Their patterns of misconduct don't evolve from feedback, effects on others or their own personal reflection.

Helicopter parents cannot understand themselves any better than those that shoot them down with no empathy, compassion or insight. Their lives are devoid of the power of positive relating. No one is transporting them from their current bad place to a better outlook, self concept and basis for interacting with others. Repairing their condition comes about from giving them the feeling of being understood.

Picturing helicopter parents as "going through a process" relieves their stigma of being stuck with a toxic condition. Seeing how their actions are not their best choice helps them reconsider their options. Giving them an experience of positive relating makes it easy for them to mimic it and pass it on. Really relating with them catches on and their unwanted behaviors fade away. The helicopter parents get transported to a better place to come from when they relate to the children.

Helicopter parents and college dropouts

Each kind of helicopter parent takes a different view of any child of theirs dropping out of college. Each type has a different way to make sense of what happens, relate to their children and react to incidents they cannot control. Here's the four takes on dropping out that are likely to show up from the four kinds of helicopter parents:

1. The best kind of helicopter parents would take the dropping out of college in stride. They respect their offspring and expect them to demonstrate self respect in their choices. They have spent years discouraging a child's self-sabotage, self contempt, self abuse and self repudiation. Likewise these parents have recognized evidence of better judgment, broader perspectives, more inclusive outlooks and long range considerations. They can trust the student's decision to drop out would have been wrestled with to sort out conflicting feelings and been discussed with others for varied perspectives. The best kind of helicopter parents would expect more of the same resourcefulness, resilience and insight in future decisions too.
2. The transport kind of helicopter parents would question the decision to drop out of college. They would bring to the conversation many issues, long range considerations and other perspectives. They would be help their student make a better decision without saying what to decide in the end. They would contribute to the process of their child making up his/her mind and leave it at that. The final decision would be up to the student who will live with it and its consequences with no one else to blame or thank. The transport helicopter parents would simply move the student from a place of worries, frustrations or indecision to a better place of considerations, perspectives and self awareness.
3. The combat kind of helicopter parents would oppose the decision to drop out of college. They would bring many opposing arguments, put downs and guilt trips to the heated discussion. They would seek to undermine the student's confidence in his/her own judgment, perspective and priorities. They would seek to get their child out of touch with irrational feelings in order to force a purely rational choice to be made. They could not trust a process, handoff the final say or encourage their child to respect him or herself. They could only combat a stupid decision by attacking the reasoning and arguments of the enemy under their roof. Dropping out would be their worst fears coming true and a nightmare happening before their eyes.
4. The hovering kind of helicopter parents secretly want their children to drop out college and move home again. They hope their family ties will ensnare their offspring into lasting emotional dependency. Their self-pity seeks the commiseration of young ones with equal regrets, failures and victim stories in their lives. By dwelling on the stigma from dropping out out college, they assume their children will lack the confidence to fly the coup or to venture out on their own. The child can remain "daddy's little princess" or "mommy's little man". These parents will maintain the cover that hides their own insecurities, neediness and emotional dependence on their children. They disguise their toxic shame as being "exceptional parents"

The decision to drop out of college does not occur in isolation. It does not depend entirely on how the college mistreats the student or fails to deliver a valuable education. The dynamics of the family alter what students would realize on their own -- sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

Hovering helicopter parents - part 2

When parents hover over their own children, there is no guarantee about what happens next. There are a wide variety of effects on the offspring from having parents "breathe down their necks" and "micro manage their every move". Hovering helicopter parents make a big deal out of family ties, emotional bonds and obligatory strings attached to their generosity. These forms of emotional abuse evoke many different reactions from their offspring in college.

1. Some children catch on quickly and come down with the same condition. They become equally needy, insecure and dependent on emotional support from others. They learn to emulate the example set by their parent(s) and not rock the boat. They make a big show of admiring their parents, being loyal to them and protecting them from upsetting experiences. They put a good face on a sinister pattern that obstructs maturing and independence.
2. Some children become indignant and resentful. They throttle an oversupply of rage, hatred and contempt directed at their parents. They feel betrayed, corrupted and misled by bogus adults who smother them with pseudo caring. This bitterness can infect other relationships at school and push people away who act caring. Other people automatically appear likely to take hostages, trap others in insatiable obligations and manipulate shows of affections. The ability to discern genuine interest, caring and compassion has been tainted by their prior emotional abuse.
3. Other children become hyper-sensitive to others' state of mind. They feel other's feelings instead of their own. They are quick to put others at ease, calm them down and reassure their insecurities. They known the territory well where understandings come unglued, emotions get unleashed and confidence gets trashed. These students are poised to enter helping professions, serve customers or work with people in their jobs. They've turned their liability into an asset that others will find a valuable resource. They know how to prevents or solve other problems with other people. Yet these children of smothering parents are very prone to employment and relationship burnout due to being constantly vigilant, overly concerned with others and out of touch with their own feelings.
4. Some other children seem unrelated to their hovering parents. They exude confidence and an ability to succeed. They impress others with their determination, focus and resolve. They appear to be self reliant and resourceful as if they grew up exceptionally fast. They are unlike the others who are insecure, resentful or overly attentive. These children can get on an success track that extends for more than a decade. Yet there is usually a fateful incident where the high flyer gets shot down. Some inner urge to self-destruct takes control of decisions, judgment calls and priorities. The legacy of the hovering helicopter parents finally appears as if there really has been no escape all along. The damage comes to the surface and betrays the image of being very different from the family of origin. The shattering experience can yield a permanent loser or the emergence of true character and calling.

Whatever the effect that plays out, it's a costly one. There's a big price to be paid for having childish parents who feed off their children's vitality.