Nana (my mother) used to work in our county’s public school system — first as a substitute teacher, then as a parapro, and finally as a PE teacher (before “retiring” to help take care of Captain Science while I finished my undergrad). She often referred to the children at her school as the “bubble wrap children of [NanaSchool] Elementary” due to overt helicopter parent over-protectiveness exhibited by the majority of the [s]mothers (and some fathers bothers) at the school.
One great example of this is during the Presidential Fitness Challenge. The children had to run a short distance in order to meet the standards. Apparently, many of these kids had never run before, because they were stopping in the middle of the run, completely freaked out, because…
Their hearts were beating fast and it was hard to breathe while they were running!
They would then go, wailing miserably, to the front office to call their mommies, who would come snatch their fragile darlings up out of school to take them home, declaring that they MUST have asthma (undiagnosed, of course, and oddly enough, completely asymptomatic otherwise) and should therefor never be made to do any hard physical exertion.
Whenever someone makes a comment to me about the sheltered existence of homeschooled children, I think of the bubble wrap children of [NanaSchool] Elementary, and I smile.
Yes. Sheltered. That’s totally us.
