Please, step back!

Thirty-five years ago my wife was the volunteer coordinator at the grade school down the street. She seldom had to do much coordinating because there weren’t many volunteers. My daughter-in-law currently holds the same position in the same school. And although she would always like to have additional volunteers, she manages many more than my wife ever did.

When I was a child, if I saw a parent in the school it was a bad sign. Either someone had gotten sick or some poor soul had done something that had put him on the path to expulsion. School was a treasured parent-free zone, my own little social laboratory where I could experiment with the person I was going to be when I grew up.

But now parental involvement is viewed as one of the keystones of child rearing. Parents feel they need to be active participants in their child’s schooling, and this has increased parental involvement in the classroom. This would seem to be a good thing, propelled partly by a genuine desire to help schools where resources are being stretched thin by budgetary constraints. But occasionally, volunteering is a misguided attempt to deal with unresolved, sometimes bidirectional, separation anxiety.

And I fear that sometimes volunteering is a cover story for spying. Most children are stingy with stories about their school days. "What happened in school today?" The typical response is "nothing special." Unless of course, "Rachel vomited on her desk during math this morning."

I have always suspected that parental involvement is a double-edged sword. And some recent work by two sociology professors – Keith Robinson of the University of Texas in Austin and Angel L. Harris of Duke University in Durham, N.C. – suggests that the blade more often cuts in an unintended direction ("Parental Involvement Is Overrated" – New York Times Sunday Review, April 13, 2014). Their longitudinal study involved a survey of American families in the 1980’s to the 2000’s that looked at demographics, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and levels of parental engagement (not just classroom volunteering) in relation to academic outcomes.

What they discovered was that in two groups divided by ethnicity and race but with similar levels of parental involvement, the children whose families valued education less highly did less well academically. The investigators also discovered that most forms of parental involvement "yielded no benefit to children’s test scores or grades regardless of racial or ethnic background or socioeconomic standing." In fact, when involvement did make a difference, it was more often negative.

Although most of us believe that regular reading to elementary school children has a positive effect, these authors found that while white and Hispanic children benefited, blacks did not. Obviously, parental involvement is a complex factor in children’s lives, and we must be careful about making assumptions before we make blanket recommendations. For example "consistent help with homework never improved test scores or grades," and in fact, regular help usually resulted in poorer performance.

However, parents can have a positive effect when they make it clear from the beginning that they value education and expect the child will go to college. Requesting a particular teacher helps as does discussing the child’s school activities at home. However, parents must expect that most of these discussions will be short.

I suspect that the professors would agree with my suggestion to parents that if they would like to help in the schools, they should volunteer in a classroom other than their own child’s, or even better, run the copier machine in the office or sweep out the equipment room in the gym.

Most of us cringe when we hear about extreme cases of helicopter parenting when parents rent apartments near campuses to be close to their college age children. But, few of us would have predicted the findings of this study that suggest parental involvement in younger children’s school lives is not only ineffective but often detrimental. As pediatricians, we can help parents do the counterintuitive thing and as these authors suggest, "set the stage and then get off."

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at [email protected].

Thirty-five years ago my wife was the volunteer coordinator at the grade school down the street. She seldom had to do much coordinating because there weren’t many volunteers. My daughter-in-law currently holds the same position in the same school. And although she would always like to have additional volunteers, she manages many more than my wife ever did.

When I was a child, if I saw a parent in the school it was a bad sign. Either someone had gotten sick or some poor soul had done something that had put him on the path to expulsion. School was a treasured parent-free zone, my own little social laboratory where I could experiment with the person I was going to be when I grew up.

But now parental involvement is viewed as one of the keystones of child rearing. Parents feel they need to be active participants in their child’s schooling, and this has increased parental involvement in the classroom. This would seem to be a good thing, propelled partly by a genuine desire to help schools where resources are being stretched thin by budgetary constraints. But occasionally, volunteering is a misguided attempt to deal with unresolved, sometimes bidirectional, separation anxiety.

And I fear that sometimes volunteering is a cover story for spying. Most children are stingy with stories about their school days. "What happened in school today?" The typical response is "nothing special." Unless of course, "Rachel vomited on her desk during math this morning."

I have always suspected that parental involvement is a double-edged sword. And some recent work by two sociology professors – Keith Robinson of the University of Texas in Austin and Angel L. Harris of Duke University in Durham, N.C. – suggests that the blade more often cuts in an unintended direction ("Parental Involvement Is Overrated" – New York Times Sunday Review, April 13, 2014). Their longitudinal study involved a survey of American families in the 1980’s to the 2000’s that looked at demographics, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and levels of parental engagement (not just classroom volunteering) in relation to academic outcomes.

What they discovered was that in two groups divided by ethnicity and race but with similar levels of parental involvement, the children whose families valued education less highly did less well academically. The investigators also discovered that most forms of parental involvement "yielded no benefit to children’s test scores or grades regardless of racial or ethnic background or socioeconomic standing." In fact, when involvement did make a difference, it was more often negative.

Although most of us believe that regular reading to elementary school children has a positive effect, these authors found that while white and Hispanic children benefited, blacks did not. Obviously, parental involvement is a complex factor in children’s lives, and we must be careful about making assumptions before we make blanket recommendations. For example "consistent help with homework never improved test scores or grades," and in fact, regular help usually resulted in poorer performance.

However, parents can have a positive effect when they make it clear from the beginning that they value education and expect the child will go to college. Requesting a particular teacher helps as does discussing the child’s school activities at home. However, parents must expect that most of these discussions will be short.

I suspect that the professors would agree with my suggestion to parents that if they would like to help in the schools, they should volunteer in a classroom other than their own child’s, or even better, run the copier machine in the office or sweep out the equipment room in the gym.

Most of us cringe when we hear about extreme cases of helicopter parenting when parents rent apartments near campuses to be close to their college age children. But, few of us would have predicted the findings of this study that suggest parental involvement in younger children’s school lives is not only ineffective but often detrimental. As pediatricians, we can help parents do the counterintuitive thing and as these authors suggest, "set the stage and then get off."

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at [email protected].

Thirty-five years ago my wife was the volunteer coordinator at the grade school down the street. She seldom had to do much coordinating because there weren’t many volunteers. My daughter-in-law currently holds the same position in the same school. And although she would always like to have additional volunteers, she manages many more than my wife ever did.

When I was a child, if I saw a parent in the school it was a bad sign. Either someone had gotten sick or some poor soul had done something that had put him on the path to expulsion. School was a treasured parent-free zone, my own little social laboratory where I could experiment with the person I was going to be when I grew up.

But now parental involvement is viewed as one of the keystones of child rearing. Parents feel they need to be active participants in their child’s schooling, and this has increased parental involvement in the classroom. This would seem to be a good thing, propelled partly by a genuine desire to help schools where resources are being stretched thin by budgetary constraints. But occasionally, volunteering is a misguided attempt to deal with unresolved, sometimes bidirectional, separation anxiety.

And I fear that sometimes volunteering is a cover story for spying. Most children are stingy with stories about their school days. "What happened in school today?" The typical response is "nothing special." Unless of course, "Rachel vomited on her desk during math this morning."

I have always suspected that parental involvement is a double-edged sword. And some recent work by two sociology professors – Keith Robinson of the University of Texas in Austin and Angel L. Harris of Duke University in Durham, N.C. – suggests that the blade more often cuts in an unintended direction ("Parental Involvement Is Overrated" – New York Times Sunday Review, April 13, 2014). Their longitudinal study involved a survey of American families in the 1980’s to the 2000’s that looked at demographics, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and levels of parental engagement (not just classroom volunteering) in relation to academic outcomes.

What they discovered was that in two groups divided by ethnicity and race but with similar levels of parental involvement, the children whose families valued education less highly did less well academically. The investigators also discovered that most forms of parental involvement "yielded no benefit to children’s test scores or grades regardless of racial or ethnic background or socioeconomic standing." In fact, when involvement did make a difference, it was more often negative.

Although most of us believe that regular reading to elementary school children has a positive effect, these authors found that while white and Hispanic children benefited, blacks did not. Obviously, parental involvement is a complex factor in children’s lives, and we must be careful about making assumptions before we make blanket recommendations. For example "consistent help with homework never improved test scores or grades," and in fact, regular help usually resulted in poorer performance.

However, parents can have a positive effect when they make it clear from the beginning that they value education and expect the child will go to college. Requesting a particular teacher helps as does discussing the child’s school activities at home. However, parents must expect that most of these discussions will be short.

I suspect that the professors would agree with my suggestion to parents that if they would like to help in the schools, they should volunteer in a classroom other than their own child’s, or even better, run the copier machine in the office or sweep out the equipment room in the gym.

Most of us cringe when we hear about extreme cases of helicopter parenting when parents rent apartments near campuses to be close to their college age children. But, few of us would have predicted the findings of this study that suggest parental involvement in younger children’s school lives is not only ineffective but often detrimental. As pediatricians, we can help parents do the counterintuitive thing and as these authors suggest, "set the stage and then get off."

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at [email protected].