Crossing Over

If I told you I walk my son to school because he has to cross a busy road, you probably wouldn't think anything of it ... unless I also mentioned that he's a junior in high school, about a week short of eighteen years old. Then the thup-thup-thup sound of helicopter parenting would begin to beat in your ears, and you might feel silent pity for the teenage boy whose mother just won't let go, the adolescent with disabilities whose mother won't give him wings, the young man who never has a chance to fit in because his dang mother is too busy fluttering around him, removing all challenges, limiting him with her smothering concern.

And I will tell you that yes, my son may be mompecked and overprotected, but that's better than being a wet spot in the road.

Read the rest of this post at Hopeful Parents.

ID Badges

Here's a mystery: My son loves ID badges, makes up his own ID badges on the computer and prints them and laminates them and wears them constantly when he's at home, makes badges for friends and makes them wear them, is constantly fascinated with the badges of workers and teachers and other people he sees. Yet, when he has an actual real ID badge of his own that he has to wear, he wants no part of it. It's so weird to get a note home complaining that his boy who has 50 homemade badges hanging up in his room is in trouble for not wearing his school ID. What's up with that? Why is that badge of all badges not worthy?