Overdoing It?

By Rebecca Winters And Wendy Cole/Chicago

Every school has its Leslie Kanofsky. She's the parent all the teachers know, whether they have taught her kids or not. She's a loving mom, a committed PTA officer, a regular face in the halls--and, some say, a royal pain. In an age when many schools would be pleased if most of their parents would venture into the building a couple of times a year, Kanofsky, of Skokie, Ill., is in her kids' schools as many as three times a week. The mother of a sixth-grader, an 11th-grader and a college student, she has crusaded for typing instruction, against the high noise level at pep rallies and for more-demanding instruction at the junior high. "When a principal says, 'It's my school,' I tell him, 'It's our school. You have to do what the community wants,'" says Kanofsky, who limits her work as a pharmacist to every other weekend so that she has time for tasks like volunteering at the junior high school store.

By all accounts, Kanofsky's activism and enthusiasm are well intentioned, and it's clear she is having an impact on her children and their schools. But not all that impact is welcome. Like many other kids of what some teachers call "helicopter parents," Kanofsky's children say they are sometimes embarrassed by their mom's presence and influence in the schools. "It's hard to tell if teachers are reacting to you as a person or if [their behavior] is colored by their impressions of your parent," says Laura Kanofsky, 19, who will be a sophomore at Harvey Mudd College in California in the fall. When it came time to apply for college, Laura says matter-of-factly, she determined that "anywhere my mom could drive to by lunchtime was too close."

--By Rebecca Winters and Wendy Cole/Chicago