About that first example... showing up at your child's bedside when they're in hospital doesn't sound particularly helicopter-y.

If the child was low-key sick, sure, that'd be silly -- a stomach bug or flu keeping you in bed for the weekend doesn't warrant cross-country flights. But a drug overdose? That's a serious health issue.

More to the point, someone who just ODed on drugs might very well need some therapy or even an intervention. The hospital is just going to toss him out on the street once he can walk on his own again and whomever his friends are at school they probably aren't helping. If the parent doesn't go over there and intervene there is a very high chance he will end up in the hospital or the morgue shortly afterward.

I'm with you. If a kid has to go to the hospital from a drug overdose, I hope their parent cares enough to go an support them.

I taught an introductory computing course for incoming freshman while I was at university. I once had a student's mother call the department head to complain about her child's grades and the "needless difficulty" of the class.

Fortunately, my boss was[1] fantastic and told that parent to piss off, not-quite-politely explaining that her son is now a grown-ass man, and that if he weren't doing well in the course then it was his own damn fault, and that it's pretty pathetic that as an adult, he was still having his mother fight his battles for him, and furthermore pathetic that his mother was complicit in such. She also put a few kind words toward my abilities as a teacher, which had me feeling pretty chuffed ;)

Seriously, that class was quite likely the single easiest course required by the college of engineering, and anyone who failed it was either too lazy to do the work or they simply didn't have what it takes to be an engineer (either way, most of the failures wound up dropping out of the college of engineering within a year or two; a few came back ready to take it more seriously in round two; one of my students took my class three times, and he failed every time, finally dropping out of engineering after three semesters).

All in all, it was pretty sad.

[1]: She's still fantastic, though she's no longer my boss :)