turn into the most gawdawful helicopter parents? My stepson is a freshman at VT, so I joined a couple of VT parent facebook groups. I sure hope it is just a vocal minority of parents, but there sure seem to be a lot of them that are having aneurisms over the idea that their kid isn't communicating with them every few hours. We're from the generation of "go outside and don't come back until dinnertime," and "do you know where your kid is?" How did that kind of childhood turn into parents that hover over the kid's every move?