I have a coworker whose daughter attended college at the same university where her high school boyfriend decided to attend. The boyfriend’s mom moved to the city that the college was in. The boyfriend dropped out after fall semester freshman year. So…yeah, that turned out well (sarcasm intended).
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Calling all oldtimers who recall parentofIvyhope and Arpmom!
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I don’t think the OP or the article linked were intended to address the parents of students with special needs. I’m sure no offense was meant.
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This is an annual event on my kid’s college parent page. People seem incredulous that a public university has old dorms. Little do they know that the notoriously bad dorms on campus always seem to produce the closest friend groups. I guess the comradery of going through their version of rouging it. The parents get way more upset about the dorms than the students do.
While not living directly off campus, I’ve met a lot of college parents who have “retired” to the southern states when their youngest kid gets into one of the colleges here. I do know one person who relocated to the college town where their kid was going. The kid is now in an international grad school program. I don’t think the parent is following this time.
I’m always happy to converse with a roommate’s parents if we happen to run into each other but I don’t really want to immediately link up on every social media platform or be texting buddies (especially given the uncertainty of our kids getting along). The exception are the parents of close friends of my kids, where we’ve interacted many times at campus events and have hit it off. I still keep in touch with parents from my older daughter’s college, and she graduated in 2017. They came to her wedding, and we’ll be going to their daughter’s wedding next summer.
I’ve had kids at 6 different universities. I join parent pages to get information about hotels, restaurants, and for a couple of my kids, learning about important dates (to be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever read a single email from the universities). Some parents are crazy! Just this morning there was a water main break at a dorm - this was reported by a parent who drove over with towels, telling other parents not to panic.
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The only time I panicked when my son was at UT-Austin was the time he called and said, “Mom, there’s a shooter on campus!” The guy was right across the street from his dorm, where he was at the time. Fortunately, the dorm was a fortress (it has its own zip code and was the largest dorm in the world at the time).
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Our son’s entire college was a fortress. There were guns and shooters everywhere. Tanks, too. And explosions.
(So sorry, everyone. It’s all I’ve got. Kid’s choice of “college” has rendered me practically useless for most threads.)
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One of my son’s freshman suite mates father got so drunk playing pong with students over parents weekend that he puked and passed out on their communal couch.
What not to do if you’re the parent…
Do not put yourself in a position to be the “punch line” every time your kid gathers with friends and they start to recount “remember that time freshman year when…”.
I feel horrible for both the dad and the kid. Nice people and we always try to minimize it by saying how everyone had fun and had a few too many but you know they remain mortified.
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This reminds me of what not to do if you’re the parents of a college senior. At our son’s graduation, one cadet was literally pulled out of the lineup into the stadium and separated for coming to post drunk the previous Tuesday from prematurely celebrating graduation with his parents. Parents kept pushing just one more celebratory drink on him, and he ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. The commandant was refusing all week to sign his diploma, but judgement was not final until grad morning. He was separated, no diploma, and a $163,000 recoupment bill. Hard to fathom, but the Army cannot tolerate bad judgement among officers who are charged with the lives of others. The parents should have faced the UCMJ, too, IMO.
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One of my D’s teammate’s parents did that so they could watch their daughter play. I think the dad had his own service type business that didn’t require them to live in 1 place. We just had 4 Spring vacations in Florida when our D played down their over Spring break
No offense taken. Just adding genuine advice for those parents of college freshmen who do happen to have special needs, having learned that particular lesson the hard way.
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Correct. Was NOT applicable to families whose kids have learning disabilities, are neurodivergent, have complex chronic medical conditions, etc.
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Lol, some of the posts on my S’s Parents FB page are powered by propellers. But I guess there are some helpful tips especially for move-in logistics. The stuff about dealing with campus life is where I draw the line. One point of college is so that your kids starts figuring out stuff for themselves.
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Sadly, I don’t think those parents will be reading this type of article or thinking it applies to THEM or their kids (they are special).
I did call my daughter’s coach once because I needed an extra ticket to an athletic fundraiser event. I asked if she knew of anyone who had made a donation (you got a ticket with a donation) but who wasn’t going to attend as my mother wanted to attend. Coach hooked me up. But there were parents who called her all the time, upset that their daughters weren’t picked as captain, needed more playing time, had a problem with a class or grade. My daughter would have killed me if I’d done any of that.
In Dec of her first year there was a mix up in the registrar’s office and she couldn’t register for classes on a Friday night (I kid you not, registration on Friday night, then over the weekend) She registered on Monday morning by then the lab she needed was full and the one available was during her practice time. I told her to let the coach know that she had to have the lab and, oh well, would miss practice twice a week. By noon a miracle occurred and a spot in the earlier lab opened up (thanks coach) No need for Mom to contact the coach,
We had a group of parents furious that not all the dorms are air conditioned (it’s Massachusetts, it’s not historically that hot when school is in session) and so angry about it. But they Could Not Believe that the school didn’t organize delivery of bottled water, like individual serving size bottles, to each student in the warm dorm. They called to complain to the school.
Note - each of those dorms had multiple bottle filler stations per hallway.
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It’s the same parents who complain about the heat. Most of the northeast dorms I’m familiar with have the heat go on once a year, and then off once a year. They complain in October that it’s too cold, and then that it’s too warm 3 weeks later. Y kids grew up without central a/c, I grew up with zero a/c (150 year old house, my dad said window units didn’t look nice from the street).
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Don’t panic if your child doesn’t answer your calls.
One of the best memes I saw was shared during the parent session at freshman drop off:
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It’s amazing how communications have changed in the past 30 years. It is so cheap and easy to communicate with your college kids these days. In my day, long distance calls were expensive (I still remember the digital sound device I put on the rotary phone’s mouthpiece to access Sprint’s discount long distance service). My parents had the unfortunate habit of calling me early on Saturday/Sunday mornings so that they could catch me. My roommates were not appreciative of that, and we still joke about it to this day.
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