Helicopter parents turn into stealth bombers and court orders them to stop stalking daughter at college
We read a great deal about college students who are overly dependent on their parents, but 21-year-old Aubrey Ireland contended that she faced the opposite problem – obsessive parents who secretly monitored her emails and calls, watched her sleep at night via Skype and showed up at her college uninvited to check up on her and speak to her department head.
A court sided with Ireland, ruling that her parents’ behaviors amounted to stalking and ordering them to stay clear of their only child while she was finishing school. Among the parents’ transgressions: Installing monitoring software on her computer and her phone.
A dean’s list music theater major from Kansas, Ireland said she had no choice but to take her parents to court. Outraged, her parents are now attempting to recoup the $66,000 in tuition they paid the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. (The school gave Ireland a scholarship to complete her final year.)
Ireland told “Good Morning America:” “They basically thought that they were paying for my college tuition and living expenses that they could tell me what to do, who to hang out with … basically control all of my daily life.”
At the court hearing, Ireland’s mother described her daughter as “an only child who was catered to all her life by loving parents. We’re not bothering her. We’re not a problem,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
In a news story on the case and the hearing, Enquirer reporter Kimball Perry wrote:
That’s not what Aubrey Ireland told police last year when they were called to her apartment. The daughter said she was assaulted by her mom who in turn said the daughter assaulted her. The parents became such an issue that the school hired security guards to keep them out of their daughter’s performances. When the parents stopped paying her tuition because she’d cut off all contact with them, the school gave her a full scholarship for her final year.
The college senior decided to seek a civil stalking order to keep her parents away from her after they went to UC and told her college administrators they could seek to have her taken in for mental evaluations. That, the parents noted, ”will attract a lot of publicity,” according to court documents.
She filed a Sept. 24 stalking order against her parents, a case that was heard Oct. 9 and again Dec. 10.
After Common Pleas Court Judge Jody Luebbers asked the sides to work out a settlement moments before the Dec. 10 court hearing started, Julie Ireland told her daughter’s attorney they wanted her to return to them the $66,000 they’d spent on her three years of college tuition.
After an intervention failed when the mediators told the parents they, not their daughter, were the issue, the Irelands said their daughter was ”a good actor and lying.” David Ireland is particularly worried for his daughter ”because of my family history of mental health,” noting he had three first cousins who committed suicide, according to court documents.
Because Aubrey Ireland, who is scheduled to graduate in the spring, is an adult, she is allowed to live her life as she chooses, a judge ruled.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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59 comments Add your comment
Mastro
January 4th, 2013
9:52 am
The nutty behavior here is paying $66,000 a year for a music major degree.
ScienceTeacher671
January 4th, 2013
10:18 am
Both are at fault. The parents were obsessive, but the girl had the option of paying for her own cell phone, etc., if she didn’t like them monitoring the one THEY paid for.
gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
January 4th, 2013
11:10 am
Enter your comments here
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
January 4th, 2013
11:23 am
These parents are not too different from many parents hovering around our school system. Private, public, charter….whatever, they believe that because they are paying tuition or taxes or donating to the booster club or the PTSA, they deserve special privileges. Of course, we also have the other group of parents who feel entitled to have teachers and administrators follow their demands because they believe they are entitled to it. If their demands aren’t met, they call teachers and administrators prejudiced or racist. And…in APS they get away with it.
Few parents seems to understand the cliche that if you hold on too tightly, you lose control.
Kudos to this young lady for taking on her parents. Really, what did they expect after modeling this type of controlling behavior to her? She has learned how to get what she wants from them.
All I'm Saying Is....
January 4th, 2013
12:46 pm
Wow. “Loco parentis” is apparently a malignant new species that has evolved from the annoying but usually benign “helicopter parento” … and is growing in numbers and magnitude.
Ole Guy
January 4th, 2013
4:59 pm
So many comments concerning Aubrey’s choice of major…SO GD WHAT! Whatever her choice, she is, presumably, empassioned by music. Whether this type of degree is prone to commanding any meaningful career/living is a completely separate issue; Aubrey apparently has a love of music…and that’s all there is to it.
Sticking to the topic at hand, some of you seem to feel that her parents’ financial support somehow entitles them to meddle into their daughter’s every movement. Let’s get a little graphic (my preferred approach) for just a moment. As this young lady grew up, were her parents entitled to monitor breast size simply because they were paying for her undergarments? Was her choice of toothpaste, anti-perspirant, and lady dodads subject to parental oversight because…they were paying for it? Last I heard, a part of parental responsibility…NORMAL parental responsibility…was the instilling of trust in their offspring.
These parents, regardless of Aubrey’s oulook…spoiled, as some have suggested…are extremely overbearing, self-dillusional (in that they probably think their daughter is not conducting herself in a manner which meets with their approval…again, SO GD WHAT?), and extremely caustic in any relationship…past, present, or future…they have with their daughter. This very relationship WILL carry over into Aubrey’s adult life, her professional life, and her personal life.
Aubrey’s ONLY course of action is to “put it on the line”; tell her folks exactly how she feels, and to butt out of her life’s decisions. If this places her financial support in any kind of jeapardy, than the answer lies right there. Her parents (probably in their own minds) have done a lousy job of raising their daughter into a responsible STAND-ALONE adult, and are holding the threat of financial withdrawl as a weapon to maintain control over their little girl.
The very fact that Aubrey has chosen a goal-directed major (as opposed to one of the fluffy “find myself” degrees…ie Philosophy…Underwater Basket Weaving, etc) serves as clear indication that, despite the apparently strict upbringing of her youth, she has developed a love; a zest for life expressed through here desire to gain a music degree.
Godspeed, Aubrey…
Beverly Fraud
January 4th, 2013
8:11 pm
“Beverly, I stand by my assertion. If you’re a teacher,all of our tax money (and your education) have been utterly wasted.You shouldn’t be allowed around children,sharp objects or public discussion.Other than that,you’re probably a pretty nice person.”
Well, (the aptly named) Slo, you had better stand by your assertion. In fact I would go so far as to say that you have a moral obligation to stand by said assertion, because if you are waiting for facts and logic to stand by your assertion, your assertion is going to get pretty lonely.
BTW my mother says I’m a nice person…well at least she implies it on occasion, when she has to make excuses to the bridge club as to why I am still living in the basement. (And who knew trailers had basements?)
Jan
January 5th, 2013
11:34 am
How many of you grew up with “bona fide, medical records, and legal records to prove it” crazy parents? I did. My mom tried the same thing with MY MONEY, MY RULES, constantly forgetting that I had paid for 85% of my education. She literally threatened me with being disowned if I didn’t move back to her house after I graduated from college. I chose to moved out on my own and started my career. She didn’t speak to me for 6 months. This overly controlling, “you are the problem, not me” behavior on her part continued well after I was living independently, was employed, and even after I married. She threatened not to come to my wedding since she didn’t approve of my choice for my husband. He is a sweet, gentle, kind, responsible, gainfully employed man whom I still adore after over 30 years. I literally had to divorce my mom from my life for about 3 years because she was too caustic for my mental health. After she got on the appropriate medical treatments and modified her behavior, we were able to reconnect, but I was always suspicious of her, always waiting for the bad behavior to reappear.
I do not blame this daughter for her reaction to their overly intrusive attempts to control her life. I would have done the same thing.
Jan
January 5th, 2013
12:23 pm
So… All of you that are the child of a mentally ill parent… Please raise your hand…
Any one here besides me and Aubrey???
I do not fault Aubrey for continuing to take her parents’ financial support while she grew to understand that her parents are CRAZY. It takes a while to figure out that not everyone’s world works the same way that your psychotic parents raised you to think it does. Now that she has figured out how warped her parents’ world is, she is trying to break free from it. I know from experience with a schizophrenic mother. Crazy people do have kids and can warp them permanently if the kids don’t have the chance to experience normality. But the kids have to take measures to break free, like I did and like Aubrey is.
As Ole Guy said… Godspeed, Aubrey.