CHRISTIE OSBORN | guest writer

“Helicopter parents” is a term defined by CollegeBoard.com as parents who are overly involved in their children’s lives and unwilling to let their children make independent decisions. Instead of cutting parents off completely and shoving them out the door APU has taken a different approach.

“[APU] sees the college experience as a learning experience for parents too. We help parents handle their concerns for their children. Everybody wins that way,” President Jon Wallace said.

CollegeBoard did a study on parents’ involvement in their students’ lives and found that 51% of students surveyed said their parents were highly involved in their college planning. Instead of this being a negative thing, CollegeBoard discovered that students actually liked their parents’ involvement and some wanted their parents to be more involved.

“Families are very involved now. I have heard many students say their best friends are their parents,” President Wallace said. “The challenge is that students want that sense of independence and maturity. When parents step in too quickly it can diminish the opportunity for students to grow.”

One of the areas of APU that is directly hit by overbearing parents at times is the Alpha program. Tony Jien, a sophomore nursing major and Alpha leader, has had to deal with a few students with helicopter parents. His Alpha group had to change their weekly meetings because one of his commuter students had a curfew.

Jien said most of his students have really good relationships with their parents. The students want to go home and visit their families. Jien is glad that his students have good family relationships, but he does not want their parents to inhibit the student’s college experience.

“Students lack college experience when they spend every weekend at home,” Jien said. “You don’t make friends if you go home every weekend.”

Freshman athletic training major Colton Simmons can see that going away to college has been a huge help in growing independent from his parents.

“It’s up to me to let them be involved since I am eight hours from home and they’re not paying for any of my school,” Simmons said. “They don’t really have any control.”

Junior theater arts major Nate Awdykowyz said his parents have only seen the campus once, and that was after he had attended APU for a year.

“This is college. It’s time to grow up,” Awdykowyz said. “My parents have certainly been giving me room to do that.”

Some faculty on campus know how hard it can be to step back and let their college kid live their own life.

“It is hard to step back. You want to guide and protect and fix everything they can’t,” Purchasing Coordinator in APUs business office Jan Wenger said. “We need to allow [our children] to become the people that God wants them to become.”

Wenger meets with her daughter once a week for lunch on campus to keep in touch, but she has learned to step back and allow her daughter to become her own person.

Another mother on campus sees children and their parents in a similar light. Coordinator of Housing Services Michelle Luchtenburg knows many APU parents and she sees the importance of being available, but not hovering.

“I try to emulate what my mother did for me,” Luchtenburg said. “She allowed me to succeed as well as make my own mistakes. But, I always knew mom was there for me when I was ready for her.”

It seems that APU does not have an infestation of helicopter parents. Students have good relationships with their parents and are happy with their involvement.

“I really like the amount of involvement my parents have in my college experience,” junior social work major Sally Stemple said. “They show enough interest in my life that I know they really care about me and love me, but they understand that I’m an adult now and they have really given me a lot of freedom.”