Don’t go to university open days, helicopter parents told

HELICOPTER parents should stop attending university open days as their mollycoddling is fuelling ‘safe space’ culture on campuses, according to a leading private school head.

Jane Lunnon, head of Wimbledon High School, said families who ‘hover’ around their children as they go to university risk compromising their transition to adulthood.

She warned that those used to a lot of parental attention could be behind the current demand for ‘safe spaces’ at universities, where students are protected from views regarded as offensive.

Her comments came as a book, Parenting to a Degree by US Professor Laura Hamilton, highlighted the amount of interference that some middle class parents had on their child’s university life.

Mrs Lunnon, 46, said parents felt a natural instinct to protect children at all costs but needed to be ‘empowered to let go’ so that their teenagers could gain vital life skills. ‘This whole point about breaking away and taking control of your own identity and taking those risks is to some extent compromised by increasing parental need to protect and support,’ she said.

‘And to some extent the universities are complicit in that.’

Noting that some universities are running sessions at open days for parents, she said they should be ‘actively discouraged’ from attending. ‘Maybe our responsibility as school leaders is to also help to teach the parents about the importance of letting go and when that needs to happen,’ said Mrs Lunnon.

She criticised ‘safe spaces’ at universities and called for greater resilience among students, adding: ‘The hope is, that by the time children are going to university, they’ve got the ability to create safe spaces for themselves and in themselves.’

The head said she encouraged parents to let children strike out on their own because it developed life skills valued by employers. ‘It’s these qualities of intellectual resilience and profound confidence because you’ve learnt to separate yourself from your childhood,’ said Mrs Lunnon.

‘And if your childhood to some extent continues through those crucial degree years, then it’s going to be when you’re in the workplace when you’re finally doing that – or perhaps not doing it, in which case, you’re in trouble.’