Parents, former Stanford Dean, Julie Lythcott-Haims, shares some simple questions in this article to test if you’ve moved from supportive to helicoptering. She also doesn’t shy away from pointing out just how high the stakes are.

“Parents need to see that even children who succeed in doing the impossible – getting into Stanford, or Harvard, or other elite schools – bear the scars of the admissions arms race. ‘They’re breathless,’ Lythcott-Haims said. ‘They’re brittle, they’re old before their time.’”