Why is she looking up to her kid?

Because her child is 25 years old and about a half foot taller.

I was never instilled with a mistrust of people by my parents. It was my whereabouts they were overly concerned with, not the company I kept (unless of course, that person was a bad influence...). For instance, I was grieved for years that my friends had a good knowledge of the surrounding area and the nature park it enclosed, since they were allowed to wander. I just became very familiar with the estate we lived on, and by god that's a dull thing to know well after 12 years. Even to this day I get phonecalls from my mother warning me to only go out at night in the area I currently live in when I'm with friends. For christ's sake, the thieving, beating, car-burning scum live a fair way off from here these days. The way she spoke of the place when I moved out, I was expecting to be mugged around every corner by people weilding HIV contaminated needles.

I can't imagine anything worse than living at home while you're at university. Surely that defeats the primary objectives of being a student? More importantly, your parents would still sometimes not let you hang out with your friends when you were 20? That's not over-protective, that's just plain demeaning.

My parents always told me not to go out and get drunk or go on crime sprees when I was a kid but they were always of the opinion that I lived with the conseqences of my actions. If I did go out and get pissed up one night, the hangover the next day was punishment enough. My parents never really knew any of my friends' parents after I was about 12 and I doubt they cared. That level of control is completely at odds with my experience of parenting in this country, perhaps that why we're so big on teenage drinking and pregnancy.

Still, being left to my own devices never did me any harm. If nothing else, I've grown up being a good judge of character as I had a chance to meet some wankers, rather than being protected by my parents.

The only time my parents ever said anything like that to me, they ended up, in most cases, being right.

But then I reached the tender age of 12, maybe 13, since then it's been hands off.

Yeah, I kind of err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt, but I still manage. Then again, I might be the kind of person that your parents warned you about when you were younger, I don't know. >_>