Comforting tug of electronic apron strings

RE "FOR some, helicopter parenting delivers benefits" (Page A1, March 3): It's no coincidence that the emergence of the helicopter parent has coincided with cellphones, Skype, IM capabilities, and text messaging. The new technologies that working parents use to check up on their kids after school are the same instant means of communication that allow them to monitor their child's mood, minute by minute, long after they leave the nest.

My 20-year-old daughter is spending a semester in Africa, and we Skype almost every day. I think we talk more now that she is on another continent than when she is across the hallway in her bedroom. When she comes home in June, the only question I'll have is "How was the flight?"

These electronic apron strings are what keep college-age children tied to their parents when they can't figure out how to use the washing machines in the dorm, when their roommates are driving them crazy, or when they have had a few too many beers on a Saturday night. We must be better parents, having forged a closer relationship with our own kids than our parents had with us.

Daily text messaging is a far cry from when the girls in my dorm would line up at the pay phone in the hallway to place the obligatory Sunday night, long-distance call home.

Carol Band
Arlington
The writer is a humor columnist for Dominion Parenting Media.