Per Merriam-Webster, a "helicopter parent" is a parent who is overly involved in the life of their child. We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their own helicopter parent horror stories. Here's what they shared with us:
1. "I was a pre-teen during the MySpace era. Of course, I REALLY wanted a MySpace like other kids my age, but I wasn't allowed. When I was 13, my friend helped me make one on her computer. I hung out with her all the time, so I was careful to only log on using her computer and not mine. But one day, I slipped up. I logged on with my laptop. My dad found out and held a family meeting with the two of us, my mom, and my grandma. We went through every photo I'd ever posted and discussed its appropriateness level. I lost my computer FOREVER. Not for a month or a year; it was gone for good. Because of MySpace. I wasn't allowed to have a computer for the rest of my days at my parents' house."
2. "When I was in high school, my mom tried to tell me how much makeup I could wear — literally the amounts of each product. I couldn’t use more than two coats of brown mascara — absolutely no black and especially no black eyeliner. I was never allowed to wear a black bikini because it was deemed too sexy. They’d call every single one of my friends and their parents to see if I was really with them (sometimes calling more than once the same night to ask them to check if I was still there). They took my cell with no plans of returning it to me, so I had my older ex-boyfriend buy me a cheap Metro prepaid cell (unlimited calls and texts for only $30 a month back in 2009), and I somehow got away with it because they could never find evidence of the bill or the actual phone (which I kept in my bra)."
3. "When I was 11, my parents took my entire bedroom door down. When I got my first phone, they searched it probably once a week, up until my senior year of high school. They still monitor what I post on social media, so I can't even be my authentic self. Anything I perceive as funny, they see as blatantly inappropriate (I should add that they're super religious). Just recently, they forced a 1:00 a.m. curfew on me because I stayed with my boyfriend for a day. I'm 21 years old. I'm currently looking at houses and apartments to move into because this is the last straw. Once I'm moved out, I plan to go low contact."
4. "When I was in the seventh grade, I stayed the night at a friend's house who had an overbearing mother. She dead-bolted my friend's bedroom door from the outside so we 'wouldn't sneak out.' A couple of hours later, I had to pee, so my friend used a wire hanger to open the door from the outside. Of course, the mother heard, so she came out and screamed at us. I did not stay there again. That was so dangerous for many reasons."
5. "My mother recently tried to call me (one of our two required daily calls), but I was in the shower. I wanted to dry off and get dressed before I called her back. By the time I picked up my phone FOUR MINUTES later, I had three voice mails, 10 missed calls, and several texts from her. I am 52 and have not lived at home since 2005. She's MUCH worse with my younger sister, who still lives with her."
6. "My freshman year of college had a few rough patches, but I was handling things just fine. I was in college during the days of e-cards where you could input your friends' pictures and send silly cards of things like dancing reindeer with your friends’ faces plastered on them. I'd received one in my school email account from a friend in the dorms. I was on the phone with my parents one night and casually brought up this friend in an unrelated topic of conversation, and my mom said, 'Oh! The one who sent you that fun e-card!' I was immediately confused. I hadn't and wouldn't have shared this random card with my parents.
"When I ask how she knows about the e-card, she started stumbling over her words and said that they've been concerned about me. Since they had the password to the university portal I’d shared with them to help pay for my housing costs, they'd logged into my email and were checking up on me by reading my emails. They were worried and couldn't understand why I was so upset because 'they had good intentions.' I immediately set up an automatic forward and delete and created a private account, but the damage was already done. It's been over 15 years, and I'm still salty about it."
—Anonymous
7. "My parents pretty much followed me everywhere for the first 18 years of my life. I wasn't allowed to have a bedroom door; there were no locks on doors (not even the bathroom), and I was constantly watched and judged. My mom worked at the school I attended, and for nine years, she followed me, made other people follow me and report to her, stood at the windows to watch me at recess, and talked to all my teachers about me.
"I wasn't allowed to do anything alone, and when we had a school trip when I was 16 (I got to go after six months of begging her), she made my teacher follow me around and basically hover over me. I wasn't allowed to have secrets (I still did, but had to get creative with diaries and such), and I never got to go to a birthday party or have one of my own. It was horrible. Years later, I still cannot go outside on my own at all and have virtually zero knowledge about how to function. It literally felt like I had a helicopter hovering over me."
8. "I'm an only child of anxious parents (with anxiety issues myself). Once, I went on a weekend trip with my then-girlfriend. I forgot my phone charger (this was in the flip phone days), so my phone ran out during the weekend. I didn't have an opportunity to tell them about it in the meantime, and also, it was none of their business. Anyway, the trip ends, and I get back to my apartment. About 10 minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find two police officers doing a wellness check. I called my parents from the landline to tell them I was okay while the officers stood outside. I was 31. I got over it, but it really bothered me for a good while."
9. "I was 12 and went to a summer camp located maybe 30 km away from the city. Before that, I had never stayed anywhere alone. My parents spent the first night freaking out, and the next day, my dad drove to the camp to check on me. He just appeared, out of the blue, during lunchtime. In front of everyone. Gosh, that was embarrassing."
10. "I literally just got into an argument (one of many) with my mom about whether or not I can close my bedroom door. She proceeded to take away my phone and laptop (as she always does). I am 20 years old."
—Anonymous
11. "My mom is SUPER overprotective of my siblings and me, especially us older two kids, probably because she's super Mormon, and we don't necessarily follow that lead. We'd have to put our phones in my parents' room every night at a certain time, and if we put them away too late, we couldn't use them the next day. Also, the Wi-Fi in the house would shut off from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. on school nights and 12 a.m. until 7 a.m. otherwise. Also, she would go through our phones and search history. There was one time I found my mom scrolling through my search history, and she ended up grilling me about some R-rated movies I'd looked up (I didn't even end up watching them) and some other stuff she'd found.
"She also made us give her our login info for social media whenever we made new accounts, and she would go in and unfollow people she thought 'weren't appropriate to be following.' She unfollowed Cardi B a lot. I was, like, 17 at the time! Also, when I was first questioning my sexuality, I would look stuff up online about different identities to figure out what fit me, and my mom ended up seeing it in my search history and started asking me about it and telling me about how asexuality 'wasn't real' and how every asexual person she knew was either 'sad and lonely' or 'got over it' and was married with kids. My brother is almost 17, and I feel so bad for him because it's somehow gotten worse since I left. He can't even use technology in his room unless the door is WIDE OPEN. Plus, she started giving him a BEDTIME. Meanwhile, our two youngest siblings deal with none of this. They get away with so much and are becoming incredibly entitled as a result."
12. "These are some 'fun' things my mother has done over the years. She has texted me 80 times in a row when I failed to reply quickly. She has also called the school when I don’t pick up the phone within five minutes. She has literally driven me half a block to the store because she didn't want me to get kidnapped. She told the guy at my middle school's cafeteria he wasn’t allowed to sell me food. She made me delete a bunch of social media accounts, which only made me get more creative with hiding them and devising pseudonyms. She has shown up to pick me up HOURS early while I was hanging out with friends. She never allowed me to close my door because apparently I could 'run out of oxygen and die.'
"I’m 23 years old, and I’m not allowed to stay the night anywhere, take the bus, or go anywhere if it’s not pre-approved by her. She drives me, and I text her every 20 minutes. I wanted to go to a concert with my friend, and she made me buy her a ticket. I ended up selling them because I didn't want her there. It got to a point where she wanted me to call her every time I changed buildings in my university campus. I work from home right now, and I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. I want to move out."
13. "Until my mother's death this past April at the age of 99, she hovered over me my entire life. I am currently 65 years of age. While I did love and respect her as my mother, I struggled for independence my whole life. I provided her with the best care possible until her death and put my life on hold for several years. During that time, my partner and I had also moved my MIL with dementia into our home to care for her. My mother remained in her own home until her death. I am an only child and feel at peace with her death because of the care I provided, but I also feel guilt because this is the first bit of peace I have truly known in my adult life.
"One example of her 'helicopter personality' that I still struggle to forgive is when I became engaged to my first husband. My mother went out to the local wedding shop and found a wedding dress on sale for $25 and bought it. She robbed me of every little girl's dream of trying on and choosing the perfect dress. She proceeded to plan the entire wedding without any input from me regarding music, invitations, food, or anything else. That was 42 years ago, and I still struggle with letting it go. After my divorce, she had a key to my condo and would take her friends over to see it without asking me. It put extra stress on me because I felt like I had to keep everything in order before leaving for work because I never knew when a tour would be conducted. I finally changed the locks and only gave my parents a key when I had to go out of town. She never got over it, and our relationship never truly healed after I changed the locks. It amazes me how some mothers can make you feel such guilt over trying to set up small boundaries in your own life. I pray that putting this in writing will allow me to release some of my resentment and move on to the next phase of my life."
—Anonymous
14. "My parents, and my mom in particular, are ridiculous helicopter parents. The most scarring incident happened when I was 21. Yes, 21 years old. I was wearing a new dress for a college honors ceremony that showed *maybe* half an inch of cleavage. My mother pinned my dress shut. I yelled at her for being ridiculous, but she told me I looked like a slut. It's been 19 years, and I'm still angry."
15. "When I was 25 and studying in another city, I talked to my mom on the phone one night and mentioned I was planning to stay in for the evening. An hour or so later, my boyfriend called me and said he was going to a friend's birthday party and asked me if I wanted to go. I said sure, and we got to the party around 10:30 p.m. Well, an hour later, I checked my phone and had 78 missed calls and over 35 texts from my mother, three close friends, and my sister. My mother freaked out because she thought I had been kidnapped or something and did not believe I was just at a birthday party. She asked, 'Why didn't you tell me, or why don't your friends know about it?' To this day, she maintains that she was right to call my friends to see if I was with them.
"A few months later, I went to a roadtrip with my boyfriend, and she demanded I ring her every 30 minutes so she knew we hadn't died. She wanted me to do this for an eight-hour trip! When I 'missed' one of the scheduled haven't-died-yet calls due to bad reception, I ended up with over 20 missed calls. I'm a mother now myself, and I'm still waiting for the famous 'you'll see I was right when you have kids of your own one day' moment."
16. "My mom wouldn't let me and my sister ride in cars with anyone unless she or my dad were driving. Not my grandparents, not trusted friends, literally no one else, until we were teenagers. Even then, it was like pulling teeth. Eventually, I saved up enough to buy my own car and got my freedom that way."
17. "As a surprise, my older sister took me to get my septum pierced when I was 19 because she knew I had wanted it done. My mother was DISTRAUGHT. She would literally cry herself to sleep over it. In the end, she bribed me to take it out with the opportunity to get a puppy. Joke's on her because it was pierced wrong and had to come out anyway, but I got a dog out of it that I loved so much."
18. "Once, when I was 12, my mom dropped me off at the local library to study with some friends. I had a phone at the time, but we ended up studying in the basement, and there was no service (no Wi-Fi either). I told her the service was spotty, and I texted her on and off during the study group. About an hour in, I had a bad feeling and went upstairs. There, I see my mom at the front desk screaming at the poor librarian and demanding to know where I went. She saw me, told me to go outside with her, and then proceeded to yell at me for making her worry and not answering my phone. I tried to explain that I had no service and didn’t get her latest messages, but she wouldn’t have it. She yelled at me and made me go upstairs where there was service so I could check in every few minutes."
19. "I was really into theatre when I was kid, from early elementary age into middle school. My mom used to sit in the front row of every play and prompt me on all my lines! She would do it even for lines I knew."
20. "My childhood bedroom doorknob hasn’t been on the door since 2010."
—Anonymous
21. "Sadly, this happened when I was 22 and already living by myself. I went out with my best friend to a TV show recording, and we had to leave our cellphones at the coat check. They do this so people don't film anything from the TV show before it actually airs. The recording was longer than expected, and we didn't get out before midnight. I got my phone back, and there were, I kid you not, 16 missed calls from my mom. She couldn't reach me for maybe five hours, tops, so she called the embassy. I'm Russian living in France, although I've lived here since I was 4, so I don't know what good it would have done. She also called pretty much everyone she knew. She was waiting for me AT MY HOUSE, and she kept crying. Again, I was 22. I had already lived abroad for six months. This whole thing was just wrong and traumatizing for everyone."
22. "I got an Instagram in sixth grade and Snapchat in ninth. My parents were super skeptical about social media, so it took a lot of begging and compromise. Part of the deal was that they would have access to my passwords in case of emergency. But my mom would be logged into my account on her phone and would check it every day, sometimes even deleting posts of mine without really consulting me. I finally started speaking up in eighth grade when I was talking with a boy via DMs, and she would read our conversations and ask me why I was hiding it. Super invasive. After I spoke up, she claimed she wouldn’t do it anymore, but I could tell when she was signing into my Snap and IG, and I had a feeling she was doing it a lot. My parents wouldn’t let me change my passwords either.
"Around my junior year of high school, I thought my mom had finally calmed down and I finally had some privacy. I was 16, and no one else my age had parents controlling their social media that I knew of. Even my friends who were more sheltered than I was thought it was super weird and strict. One day, I was having a panic attack before school because of a huge test I didn’t study for, and since my parents are super against missing school, I lied about being sick. I asked for advice about faking sickness on my private story on Snapchat. My mom called me later that morning screaming at me that she saw it and that I was going to be in huge trouble — grounded, all electronics taken away, etc. Later that year, I got a therapist, and she validated that I deserved more privacy. Only after talking to my therapist did my mom finally agree to never sign into my accounts and spy again. It’s been a couple years, and she’s improved a lot. We’re really close now."
—Anonymous
23. "I used Life360 until my junior year of college. When I would go out to parties or friends’ places and come back late, I would wake up to a text from my parent with a screenshot of the Life360 notification saying I had arrived home at 2:30 a.m. along with a 'Where did you go last night?' I know it was just curiosity, but it still rubbed me the wrong way, especially freshman year, when I had finally gotten a taste of independence."
—Anonymous
24. "I have so many horror stories, but I’d say the worst (and biggest) is my mom not letting me go to school. I was homeschooled for the vast majority of my life and have always wanted to go to school. As a result, I really didn’t have a childhood/teenagehood because I had no friends due to her constant hovering. I also wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers, and she freaked out whenever I spent time with a friend who had a brother."
—Anonymous
25. "When I had my first date, alone, my mom was so freaked out that she had my grandfather sit in the back of the theater, and when I saw him, I was mortified. She also tracked me using an app that entire night."
—Anonymous
26. "I worked with a woman who was a complete helicopter parent to her only child. He wanted some freedom, so he went to a university across the country. After only a few weeks, this woman and her husband quit their jobs and moved to his university town because they missed him so much."
27. "My aunts and uncles basically abandoned my grandparents as soon as they were adults and have almost nothing to do with their lives. Since that happened, my grandma keeps track of my mom every single day. My mom is the youngest of her siblings, and my grandma calls her at least 7-10 times a day, just to see what she's doing or where she is. She pretty much never gets to plan anything or do anything on her own because my grandma always shows up unannounced at her house."
28. "I was pretty much on lockdown for years of my life. I have an older sister that was raised in another country by our grandmother, and I was raised as an only child in the US. While my sister was free to come and go as she pleased without any restrictions, I wasn’t allowed to play with the neighborhood kids. I was never allowed to go to a sleepover, and I couldn’t even go to a friend's house. My dad would help lie to my mother so I could sneak off with my friends to the movies or park. When I was 18, my mom went with me to my very first job interview at a bank and sat in the room during the entire thing. I was mortified and shocked that I actually got the job."
29. "I’m in college, and I still have a curfew of 10 p.m., and I’m tracked on Life360. This past year, I quit my collegiate sport and went through some pretty major life changes. I had already been going through a lot when, one night, I went over to a friend's house for dinner. I ended up staying there from 5 p.m. until around 9:30 p.m. I was planning on leaving at 10 p.m. I started getting text after text from my dad asking me to leave and make sure someone walked with me to my car (even though I was in a gated community in a really nice SoCal neighborhood). I eventually had to sprint out of my friend's dinner party unexplained.
"My parents called me when I got back and started accusing me of keeping secrets. My mom thought I had a secret boyfriend that I was hiding (which, tragically, was completely false) and proceeded to demand that I give them the contacts of everyone I was hanging out with at the time because they didn't know any of my friends (but they’d never asked about them before)."
30. "My parents still need to know the password to my phone. I’m 23. I’ve never been allowed to lock any doors, and if I do, my mom will just unlock them and walk in. This includes the bathroom! My parents have tracked my phone since smartphones have existed. One time in particular, I was at a movie with a group of friends when I was 16, but I wasn’t driving on my own just yet, so my parents were picking me up. Per usual, I put my phone on do not disturb in the theater. The movie started 10 minutes late, so it ended 10 minutes later than it was supposed to. Afterward, I opened my phone to five missed calls and over 20 texts from my mom freaking out and threatening me to answer."
31. Finally: "My mom still tracks my brother and me on Life360, and we hate it. We are 24 and 31. I had to take rural roads to get to my previous job, and one day, I lost signal while driving. Life360 showed that I was in a cornfield all day. I couldn't be on my phone at work, so I didn't get any calls or texts from her. She ended up calling HR a couple of times to get to me. For as long as I worked at that job, I had to text every morning letting her know I was at work. She's also convinced that my brother and I are being poisoned by the ink from our tattoos."
Do you have a helicopter parent horror story you're willing to share? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.