It's tough, being a parent. The task of raising a human being into a decent person demands vigilance, empathy, foresight and nerves of steel. You don't want anything bad to happen to your children but also want them prepared for the world and everything it can throw at you. So you, within reason, let them learn some things the hard way because, in some cases, that's the best way.

And then there are the helicopter parents who get a little too preoccupied with shielding their children from "the world." And, trust the people down below, not all helicopter parents fly at the same altitude.

I knew a mother who kept her 5-year-old daughter in diapers when they went out of the house because she didn't want her using public restrooms. Because the girl sitting in her own excrement was much better for her health, apparently.

Mine. I was 20 years old and still not allowed out of the house without my mom, and I had to hold hands crossing the street. I never had a job, never learned to cook, all because I was in her words going to live with her forever.I got a boyfriend, even though I'd never been allowed to visit anyone's house. Ever. She asked to see his SS and birth certificate to prove he was the age he said he was.

I told her I wanted to move out and she freaked. Called police and told them I was mentally unstable, told them I wasn't ready for the outside world.The police believed her and it took me a full year to actually escape. I even had relatives parked outside at night to make sure I didn't leave.I'm now 23 and slowly adjusting to the world but it's hard. I can cook but driving is hard. I have no social skills. I don't know how to talk to people.And she still asks me to come home every day via text.

I had a mother turn up at my work place accusing me of racism that I didn’t hire her daughter. We’re a very multicultural practice and myself and 2 other people are white English, 6 Indian staff, 2 Greek, 2 Nigerian, 3 Chinese and 3 Pakistani. I took her to our photo wall of staff and asked her why she thinks I was racist and she said that her daughter “looked more Indian than the other staff”... Her daughter, who was more than qualified, didn’t get the job for a couple of reasons:

1 - She refused to put her phone away during the interview in case her mother phoned. 2 - Her mother phoned more than 10 times - she answered every call. 3 - She asked if she could keep her mum on the phone to listen into the interview in case she needed help to answer my questions.How could she run a practice if she needed to have her mum help her at the interview?!

My wife being a teacher had to deal with this on a regular basis. Usually, she would have that parent do menial tasks so they would not bother the class. One parent became so overbearing (demanding to see lesson plans, making my wife take class time to re-explain subjects), my wife deliberately left a quiz out. This parent took the quiz and slipped her kid the answers. Knowing the kid was not a good student, my wife got the parent to fess up to taking the test and passing the answers. This went to the principal, and he banned her from the class. The parent made multiple complaints, even going to a district meeting. The school board held up the ban.

As a kid, my sister had a friend and went over to her house quite a bit to hang out with her. The friend lived in a very nice, quiet neighborhood.After a day of hanging with her friend at her house, my sister told me that her friend’s parents had placed cameras in her room. The camera was also equipped with a microphone to not only hear what was going on in her room, but also to speak to the child.My sister told stories after coming home about the Mom calling in to the room to sometimes tell them to stop doing an activity or to be a little more quiet. THIS WOMAN WAS WATCHING THEIR EVERY MOVE AND LISTENING TO THEIR EVERY CONVERSATION!I feel bad for the girl, honestly. To me that’s a huge invasion of privacy, as well as it is extremely creepy in general.If it were me, I’d throw every camera installed in the room straight out the window, or at the Mom. Whichever.

One lady we had over was shocked that my (at the time) 9 year old younger brother could dress himself and brush his teeth.Claiming that he was “so mature” and that her daughter age 9, couldn’t do anything like that.My mom immediately realized it was helicopter parenting and had a long talk with her. I hope that little girl has learned how to dress herself and do lots of other basics now.

Military recruiting - the helicopter parents who would try to have us recruit their kid without their consent were staggering. Parents would call to make appointments for testing, and were furious when we said we had to speak to the kid. If the kid is a minor, the parents have to sign a waiver, and at that point we can no longer give any information to the parent, so some parents would call and pose as their child in order to get test results, book appointments, and so on. Some parents even tried to attend the testing with their child and were furious when we said no.

Then, invariably, when little Johnny got turned down for being a s*** pump with no initiative, we'd get an earful from Mommy about how their child is the most special human being on the earth. Those were the fun times when I could say "have you stopped to consider that Johnny isn't getting a job because he has no initiative or desire to be here based on a parent pushing him into a career he doesn't want, rather than him being allowed to make his own choices?" Usually didn't go over well, and then I'd hang up.

Had a mother call me to find out why her son didn't get the job.He's 40.And an attorney.

I used to teach middle school. The teacher next to me had given a 6th grade girl a C on a paper because it didn't meet the proper criteria.Mom was livid and came into the school furious about the grade.After the teacher and Mom went back and forth about the grade, the Mom blurts:"I HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE AND I TOOK WRITING COURSES FOR FOUR YEARS, AND I WROTE THIS PAPER. ARE YOU TELLING ME I CAN'T GET AN 'A' ON A 6TH GRADE ASSIGNMENT?"The teacher stuck to her guns, but never answered the question.

I was a manager of a bagel store. Had an interview with a kid, I think he was about 16.His dad came to the interview, and basically answered every single question I asked the kid.At the end of the interview I turned to the dad and said "You're hired.", look on his face was priceless. The kid laughed like a maniac.

My brother was injured in a training accident in the Israeli army. It wasn't life threatening but it was a pretty messy injury that needed immediate care. For some reason the base commander tried to hide the injury and refused to send my brother to the hospital. Instead he sent him to the camp medic who took one look at my brother and said "here, have some morphine and holy god I'm going to call for help". My brother asked him to call my mom.My mom, a military police colonel at the time, commandeered a helicopter along with a squad of MP's.

She then flew up into Lebanon where my brother was based, landed in the middle of his base, ordered her way into the medical tent while setting the MP's outside as guards, loaded my brother into the chopper and evacced him out.To be fair, she's a great mom who usually lets us fail on our own, but you asked for helicopter parenting examples and it doesn't get more helicopter parent than actually commandeering a helicopter to go take care of your son!

My sister is a freshman in college, and her roommate has an absolute psycho helicopter mom. They're both on the cross country team and very good students. My sister said the roommate never drinks or goes out, but her mom tracks her through phone GPS and will text her constantly asking why she's at such and such place.My sister said one time they were at Wal-Mart getting groceries, and her mom called her to ask why she was at Wal-Mart at 9pm. Another time, they drove to my other sister's (she lives in the same town) apartment to pick something up and the girl's mom called and starts yelling and asking why she's been sitting in a parking lot for 20 minutes.

My sister said she'll constantly have to send pictures of them at the library to her to prove they're actually studying.I just don't get that kind of smothering of your kid. I mean, if you want to check up on what they're doing then fine... especially if you're paying the bills, but dang, the poor girl can't even have a normal college experience and is constantly worried about upsetting her mom. It just all seems so unhealthy to me. I mean I had friends' parents who did that in high school, but once they're adults in college, you really have to cut the cord.

While working at new student orientation in college, I was told a story from a previous year. The parents who attended orientation were housed separately from the students. One mom wanted to stay with her daughter and took the bed of another student. The mom told the student she can find somewhere else to sleep.The student, not knowing what to do, ended up sleeping in a chair in the common area of the dorm.

My aunt will not let her children play outside because they might get bitten by mosquitoes. Consequentially, they're 12 and 13 and don't know how to ride a bike.Ugh.

An acquaintance of mine getting yelled at by her parents when she decided to get an apartment for herself. She was 30 at the time.

I worked at a small community library. A kid lived in the building across the parking lot from the library. He would leave his building, walked the ~150 feet to the front door of the library, come to the desk and use the courtesy phone to call and report to his mom that he got to the library safely.I remember the day that he didn't do this, she came flying into the library like 5 minutes later FREAKING OUT that her son had been kidnapped and we needed to find him.

I worked at a science museum that had hands on for kids.The aim of the game was for the child to solve a problem by themselves. Like "can you get x to do y", they make something, test it, and figure out how to make it better.One day a woman comes in, practically dragging her five year old son. She sits him down beside me and starts poking me on the shoulder and I'm talking to another family."Tell my son what to do," she says, standing over him. I tell the family to hold on a sec, as I explain the challenge to the newcomer. The whole point is to work autonomously, so it was alright, and I was used to working with a few pushy parents so I wasn't surprised. I tell the kid the prompt, tell him he had a wide range of materials...But no. The woman wants me to tell him every step of the process.

"Tell him the answer! Tell him the answer!" she says repeatedly, grabbing his hands to make him fold paper, or reaching for my own.I start getting mad. "Ma'am, the goal here is to learn the scientific method. Make a hypothesis, test it, make conclusions and try again.""But you already KNOW the answer," she says, "tell my son! Or I'm calling your manager!"I don't even have a manager. In the mean time, the poor kid is looking so embarrassed. Ever time he tries to start something for himself, his mom reaches for his hands and tells him to wait for me to tell him what to do. The woman was so afraid of him failing when the whole point was to learn from one's mistakes. I'm so worried about how he'll deal with mistakes growing up, with her around.

Fifth grade overnight trip to nature center. A kid's mom went (was only parent that wasn't a teacher to go) and had a complete meltdown when she was told that her kid would be sleeping in a cabin with other kids and not her... She was told this before [the] trip as well. Four teachers per cabin, basically overnight school. She basically spent the entire night outside watching the cabin, really creeped everyone out...Man, the rants she went on [on] Facebook... at least her friends and family called her out on her nonsense. [I] imagine quite a few people got blocked that day.

A guy I know is 23. He has two moms. Adopted.I'm not sure which mom is worse. One of them runs all his social media accounts. We would get messages from him that just sounded weird. When asked, he would have no idea what he said. He has a cell phone that can only call his parents and 911. Not allowed to drive. Anytime he goes somewhere new, his mom tags a long for a few hours to "check things out." He's only allowed to eat at certain restaurants, has to check in with his moms constantly.He doesn't see any issue with this... I almost think its a form of abuse. He is not an independent thinker... he relies on everyone else to make decisions for him. Smart kid too.

Ooh I've got one. My mom is a nurse at an elementary school. She has a student who is allergic to a lot of stuff, so it would be understandable if his parents were a bit cautious. His parents, however, are absolutely awful and overprotective. His mother will remove him from any activity that causes him even the slightest anxiety. They give him literally anything he wants in the world, and don't make him do anything, to the extent that he believes he doesn't have to do any schoolwork whatsoever, and tells his teachers that someone will just give him a job when the time comes.

He's a fifth grader with no actual credit for the grades he's already gone through. He's been dropped by three therapists, because his mother makes it impossible for any therapist to get anything done with him, because he obviously has mental health issues. His mom routinely lies about the reasons the kid isn't in school, but doesn't let the kid in on the lies, so he inadvertently exposes his mother on a liar on a weekly basis. The kid is almost 11 and has very few of the skills that a kid his age should have. The school system has essentially given up on this family.

My sister was friends with this girl in middle school whose mom would put her tampons in for her because she was worried she wouldn't do it right. Tampons, not pads, not that pads would have been normal either.

My girlfriend's mother... My girlfriend is 22 in a few month.She keeps track of my gf's bank account and credit card purchases.She also keeps track of my gf's cell phone call logs and asks her why she's having long phone calls with this phone number, which is obviously mine.I guess it doesn't help that my girlfriend and I have been secretly dating for about a year and a half.

I was at college orientation and a girl's mother came up to my friend and said, "See that girl? That's my daughter. Go up to her and introduce yourself and be nice to her!"

I read a thing on Facebook on one of those community groups. Mom was extremely angry because "some guy" was taking photos of children at the mall, as they went to see Santa and played near by. He "was definitely taking photos" of her children, and he must be a pervert. Again, photos of children playing at the mall - not naked running around a beach, etc.Said Mom "went ballistic" and confronted him, causing a scene and threatening to violently assault him.

Pervert photo guy ran away from Mom, who was very proud of herself.Pervert photo guy found the thread, and commented that he was taking photos of Santa and all the kid for his daughter, who was in the hospital with leukemia. Mom doubles down and claims he's a lying pervert and he's been "reported to mall security and the FBI." Pervert photo guy then posts a video of himself, in a hospital with leukemia daughter, showing her the video and photos.Mom is subsequently hella shamed, doxxed, and deletes her FB account.

I work at an admissions front counter for a university so I get helicopter parents all the time over the phone, but I had a mom that had me laughing over the phone because of how ridiculous she was. Let's call her Susan for reference.At first, she was normal asking about general admissions processes and what are the requirements. However, where she messed up was when she admitted she did the application for him because "he is a boy and you know how boys can be so I just did it for him."

Then she started to fly off the walls. She asked if the campus was open because she wanted to visit her son EVERY SINGLE DAY since they live 15 minutes away from the main campus. Susan tried making herself not sound bat s**t crazy by sliding in her bringing him baked goods and home cooked meals, but I know she just wants to pester her child. There was another talk about how she wanted to get access to his student account to see his grades. I told her that she was not going to be allowed to get that access because her child will be considered an adult and the student has to give HER permission by saying a FERPA form. She wanted to know how and where to get those documents ASAP.

As far as social life, Susan asked if there were parties on campus. It's a college, of course there are going to be parties. The worst part is that she asked if they are supervised....by PARENTS!!!! This is where I couldn't help but laugh because why did she think that this was a high school setting. Susan then followed up with "Well how will I know where he is going or if he gets in trouble?" and I said, very casually, "Ma'am if your student decides to do something illegal (smoke weed/drink underaged) and gets caught by campus police and gets arrested, you'll be getting that phone call."And she had nothing else to say. :)

I had a 16 year-old coworker whose mother sat in on the interview and tried to answer all the questions for him. He quit a couple of months later, or should I say, his mother called the store to quit for him.