<p>DIETCOKEWITHLIME - I don’t think you have a very good knowledge base regarding this kid and his family and their dynamics - and I have to say - you are way off base on this one. There is much more to this issue than you are aware of. So take it a bit easy on this situation.</p>
<p>Jeepmom,</p>
<p>You may have insider information, but be fair to others that don’t. If someone posts here, we readers can only deal with the facts as written. And, in support of Dietcoke, I too had a feeling of some curious parent-student dynamics. </p>
<p>Franky, I’m surprised someone would post what seems like a serious problem in such a public forum at all. But since the OP did, I think responses like DCL’s are within bounds, especially given it appears DCL is a student. After all, what do readers expect? Only sympathy with the parent? or honest criticism within the limits of the facts on hand?</p>
<p>Please, we have enough of the speech police on these forums…</p>
<p>JMHO.</p>
<p>DCL didn’t bother to read the posts is my guess</p>
<p>Last year, the OPs S almost flunked out and was given a second chance, and is now, for whatever reasons blowing it again</p>
<p>THe student in question isn’t going to his classes, and obviouslly, to me anyway, NEEDED close monitoring after last year</p>
<p>And if I was cosigning on his loans, I would expect him to show up</p>
<p>And DCL, I can’t even comment on your post, it is so far out there</p>
<p>newmassdad, if your kid was flunking out and you were going to be stuck with who know how much debt for wasted time, bet you would be involved as well, or would you just suck up the debt, and go eh, so what he dropped out and I lose another 10grand because of deadlines for withdrawing were missed</p>
<p>I am all for striking a balance between contact and stepping back, but ONLY if the person I am funding is doing their part, regardless of “family dynamics”</p>
<p>If I am giving my money for my kid to go to college, he better darn well go to classes, I don’t need As, passing is just fine, but not bothering to take care of business, well, I would step right in</p>
<p>Failing but trying is very different from failing but partying</p>
<p>We have kids on this sight who are struggling in a class or two, who are doing whatever they can to just pass</p>
<p>Tell, me, what justification in your minds is there for not showing up for classes day after day? Well?</p>
<p>Quite honestly, I read all the posts in this thread, and then I went back and read all steel’s other posts in other threads. And I agree with DietCoke and some other posters who have raised concerns about the level of parental control and involvement here.</p>
<p>This student has never had any real consequences. He likely feels a need to distance himself from home. That’s a natural part of growing up. Parents should not be discussing classes with professors, sitting in on meetings, etc. That is the student’s responsibility.</p>
<p>If he fails, he fails. No matter your interventions, you can’t stop him. I would think that would be obvious, since you’ve already done everything but move into his dorm room. But if he does fail, you are under no obligation to pay for any more schooling. Make sure he knows this, offer advice if asked, but otherwise stay out. He will likely have to leave, find a job, and be an adult. If he decides to go back to school at a later date, you can decide whether to fund him or not. It is not the end of the world.</p>
<p>Dad has been handholding for years. Why would the kid suddenly know how to face adult responsibilities? And given that dynamic, why on earth would forcing a move back home be the best thing?</p>
<p>And CGM, no one ever said there was a justification for blowing off classes. You’re misunderstanding the criticisms. Steel, despite what you think, your son is a man. He is an adult. You are expecting him to act like an adult and refusing to recognize he is one. Why are you surprised he is rebelling?</p>
<p>CGM, </p>
<p>I probably would not have allowed the situation to develop to the place it did. So please don’t tell me what I would be doing in the same situation. I will never have the same situation, thank goodness. Rather, I would have noted what happened last year.</p>
<p>Steel: I feel for you. </p>
<p>It sounds like you have lovingly kept a foot in your sons back since kindergarten, keeping him on track, on pace etc. And when he hads fallen of the path, you have helped pick him up brush him off, and have sent him down the path again. You have been a good parent.</p>
<p>He is now, like it or not, an adult. And he must learn to fall, pick himself up, and do it via his own internal motivation. Sometimes, you have to love him and let him fall He has to fall hard, hit bottom, even flunk out before he “gets” it. There is little you can do now other than tell him you love him, and that he has a place to come to if he fails on his own. </p>
<p>There comes a point when you have to stop intervening, stop arranging for meetings with teachers or counselors or Deans. You can’t bail nim out of his problems anymore. You can’t make him go to class or stop partying. You can talk or threaten until you are blue in the face. </p>
<p>He will do it or he won’t. He will success or he will fail, or he will barely get by. And if he doesnt succeed, there will be consequences. You have to stop being his safety net other than an ultimate place he can retreat to to regroup once he fails, that is if he has no where to go or no money to pay for it. You can’t call the shots or further the power struggle. You have to let go, and let it happen. If he ends up back home, you give him a set of rules, a timeframe that you will let him stay to get his life together(six months), a bill for meals and rent (something small but a “charge” non-the-less,) and a suggestion that he get a job as you will not be paying for anything else other than the subsidy of the portion of his living expenses that his “rent” doesn’t cover. You don’t pay for car or car expenses, cellphone or clothes, entertainment, etc. Rather than kick him out, you let him stay under your roof, but following your criteria. If he can’t accept those restrictions, he can find his own place to live. </p>
<p>He needs to be able to see just how hard he will have to work, and just how little he will make and how quickly the money will be gone. And at some point, he will grow up, mature, and be ready to start the process of getting ahead in life. Hopefully he will end up back in college.</p>
<p>You will be surprised how seriously he will take you once you cut off the cellphone service (you can do it temporarily), and any other perk you are still paying for. You have to mean business, and as hard as it is for you, stay out of his affairs. If he is relying on loans, its not your educational dollar. If you are cosigning for them, is IS your dollar and you have to stop signing. He will make his own way. School of hard knocks. Kinda sucks but that is how it has to be, given where you are with things. You have done all you could, now you HAVE to step back. </p>
<p>Hard as it is, turn off the cell phone and stop trying to contact him. He will be contacting you in NO TIME.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The ironic thing is that you are at the point where he will only suceed if you let him fail. Really.</p>
<p>
With all due respect, sometimes the best thing a parent can do is listen and heed the advice of others. I know the advice you were given last year was hard to swallow, but “shooting it down” was a mistake – if the fear is that a kid who leaves school “will never return” then the kid isn’t college material to begin with. That doesn’t mean that the kid can’t change – but it is obvious that his counselors saw that your son had some serious growing up to do that wasn’t going to take place over the summer.</p>
<p>From what I can see so far of these posts, I think you need to investigate the college’s tuition refund policies and pull the financial plug before you run up more debt for a semester your son has no realistic chance at this point of completing – unless you learn some information that changes status radically.</p>
<p>My own son was out of school for 3 years and transferred to a college very far down the prestige/ranking ladder from where he started. Was I concerned about whether he would ever finish his degree? Of course I was. But I knew that it wasn’t my problem. </p>
<p>When my son was living on his own & supporting himself with a full time job, I saw some huge changes. The hours required for full time work generally put an end to either a party-centered or sleep-centered lifestyle – and I think being in a workplace where many co-workers are much older and far more mature is also influential. </p>
<p>When my son went back to college he was paying his own way at a public university. His first semester he took a heavy course load and earned straight A’s. He was disappointed when I didn’t even ask about his grades – he wanted an opening to boast, as he had been designated a “Presidential Scholar”. I told him that I loved to hear of his accomplishments and I hoped he would always tell me the good news, but as he was now an adult and paying his own way, I wasn’t going to pry and he was under no obligation to tell me what his grades were. </p>
<p>I think when as a parent you let “never” creep into your thought processes (“once he leaves school he will never return”) - then you are doing your kid a disservice. You are unwittingly conveying a message that there is only one possible path to success and that if your son doesn’t follow that, he is doomed to failure. You may not intend to do so, but the message the kid may internalize is “why bother?” </p>
<p>So my advice is to deal with the here-and-now and don’t let “never”-based fears dictate what you advise your son to do. It sounds like this is a time to cut off the funds for college and place some limits on what you will do for him from here on out. In my son’s case, when he came home I gave him a deadline, and said that after that particular date he needed to either have found a paying job or be enrolled in a local college if he wanted to continue living at home; otherwise he would have to move out. He got the job first, quit his job in order to return to school (as an extension student at a local public university) – changed his mind, went back to the employer and asked for his job back, moved out 2 months later, and grew up. The path may be somewhat rockier for many other kids, but a parental safety net is never going to make it easier. </p>
<p>Unless your son also has serious emotional, mental health or substance-abuse problems – he will do ok over time. He will return to college later on if and when he becomes dissatisfied with workplace opportunities; and if he finds work that he is happy with that doesn’t require a college degree, that’s not such a disaster. If it is a case of mental health or substance abuse, then being at college won’t solve the problem – it will simply prolong the time that those issues are left to fester.</p>
<p>My cousin had campus police pay her son a visit when he would not answer for 2 weeks. (they are military and were moving abroad and needed his passport) A knock with “campus police” answered to the question who is it?..that did it. From then on the cell was answered whenever she called. Maybe the Hall Parent/who lives there would do the trick but she called the non emergency number and told them her predicament…ALot of moving around behind the door before it opened…</p>
<p>ANother way to keep track that he is breathing is through…AIM, if you can get his sn…you can at least see him sign on or sign off. THis is enuf for me generally…I just want to know they are alive…</p>
<p>P.S. if he used a home computer this summer chances are he used AIM and his sn will be on it. Create your own sn and add him as a buddy.</p>
<p>sunnyflorida and calmom - GREAT posts!</p>
<p>I dont’ judge steel as harshly as you guys do</p>
<p>sure steel made errors, but seems they were on trying to salvage a situation and had real hopes it would happen</p>
<p>what parents haven’t done that</p>
<p>and NOW it appears that those hopes have been dashed, once again</p>
<p>and newsmassdad, we parents arent perfect and sometimes we hope beyond hope and find ourselves in the doodoo our offspring have created for themselves and for us</p>
<p>anyone think about steel and the financial obligations? if steel just let it slide, they could end up paying for a whole semester with nothing at all out of it because their son was failing</p>
<p>I am sorry, but when it MY dime, and I could be on the hook for loans and end up paying for something I didn’t get- I have the right to know if the person I am paying for is at least showing up</p>
<p>yes, it is the “student’s responsibility” but how long does the financial backer wait for? until it is too late to stop the money flowing for that semester?</p>
<p>yeah, thats a smart plan</p>
<p>amazing some are giving the parent sucha hard time for trying to do what they can for their child, maybe too much, while the student is failing out of school, for whatever reason</p>
<p>I would probably try and salvage the sitation like steel did last year, with the hope that it was an anomoly</p>
<p>I would set very strict rules, and if my kid begged me for a second chance, they would have to follow those- re contact, me being in the loop etc., because at that point my child would have shown they need structure, and who knows, maybe it would have worked</p>
<p>My nephew was on academic probation his first semester, and his parents knew, they told him that he had lost some of his hard earned independence because of that, as they were footing his bill to “party”</p>
<p>It is interesting that while a kid is at school and proving they are not as able to work it out, we say hands off hands off, but if they come home, they have rules and curfews, and the like</p>
<p>If maybe, when we discover a student in some peril, why can’t we say, hey, footing the bill here, you need to keep us posted in order for us to keep footing the bill</p>
<p>Personally, I would rather lose an entire semester of tuition and have my kid learn a really valuable lesson that will possibly help him turn his life around. Some things are more important than money. Plus, I think the semester tuition will probably cost less than all the payouts steel will be making if his son doesn’t learn the lesson.</p>
<p>well, some people think losing 20grand is a big deal…and that lesson really doesn’t effect the child does it? </p>
<p>and to say, oh let him fail on his terms and eh, the money, you can pay it off is just ludicrous</p>
<p>what lesson does the son learn if his parents are stuck with the debt because they ignored all the warning signs after giving a second chance, something I am SURE most parents here would have at least really considered</p>
<p>sometimes a persons failure isn’t their own, often it involves other people</p>
<p>anyone consider that part of the lesson is having your parents and financial backers in your business when you are failing?</p>
<p>or do you all prefer the consequence to be just one- geting kicked out of school</p>
<p>me, I kind of like the idea of consequences along the way, in hopes that maybe some restrictions, reporting etc might just do the trick</p>
<p>and one of those consequences for agreeing to a second chance is me being in the loop, so long as I was footing the bill</p>
<p>seems people here don’t see much middle ground for trying to fix things</p>
<p>maybe the OPs son is drinking, maybe doing doing drugs, maybe is bipolar, maybe is just lazy, maybe he has ADHD, maybe he got so overwhelmed he paniced- who knows, but do we wait until it is too late to step in?</p>
<p>guess so</p>
<p>what if son DID panic- kids have killed themselves for failing, and may be is sending signals in his own way, and if parent ignores those signals, how awful that would be</p>
<p>so stepping in is not a horrid thing to do, and stepping in before it reaches a point where a student may think there is no turning back is better than ignoring the situation</p>
<p>I jsut read through all of Steels past posts, and I don’t see anything alarming about their parenting</p>
<p>
No, the lesson is learned best when the parents set clear limits and withdraw the financial backing when the limits aren’t met. As long as the parents are taking on the responsibility for tracking and nagging and pushing, the kid is not going to grow or mature. </p>
<p>Cutting the apron strings is a good thing. In fact, the state of being in need of money is a terrific motivator. </p>
<p>An 18 year old is or should be an adult, capable of holding down a job and supporting himself or herself, even if that job is bagging groceries. College is a privilege that we parents finance but which requires active buy-in and participation by the kid. After my experience with my son, I made it clear to my daughter that I expected to see end-of-semester grades and that my rules were identical to the rules set by her college financial aid department – the “mommy” scholarship didn’t extend to academic probation or failure to make adequate progress through school. If I learned anything from my son, it was that being the parent of a 20 year old who is not in college but is gainfully employed is not a bad thing at all – actually, it was a financial boon to me and really helped me get on stronger ground financially, so in hindsight I owe the kid thanks for saving me the cost of 2 years at an overpriced private LAC.</p>
<p>but how can you pull the financial backing if you don’w know what is going on!!!</p>
<p>can’t have it both ways</p>
<p>I agree the 18 year old is responsible, but how long does a parent wait while they get further and further into debt?</p>
<p>Maybe they shouldn’t have let their son go back, but they did ,hoping against hope, and now it is a mess, but should they not be informed ina timely fashion so they can indeed stop the funds?</p>
<p>Most schools have tight withdraw dates where you have a prayer of getting some money back</p>
<p>for example- from my Ds school</p>
<p>ate of Withdrawal Due Fordham Refund
Prior to commencement of term 0% 100%
Prior to second week of term 15% 85%
Prior to third week of term 30% 70%
Prior to fourth week of term 45% 55%
Prior to fifth week of term 60% 40%
Prior to sixth week of term 75% 25%
Thereafter 100% 0%</p>
<p>so if parent waits until the end of the semester when the grades are posted, they lose it all</p>
<p>seems foolish to me</p>
<p>Prior to First day of the semester
(before Tuesday, September 4, 2007) 100% tuition and fees
September 4 - September 17, 2007 80% tuition only
September 18 - September 24, 2007 60% tuition only
September 25 - October 1, 2007 40% tuition only
October 2 - October 9, 2007 20% tuition only
As of October 10, 2007 0%</p>
<p>So, if the parents just keep waiting, they could be in more and more debt for nada, while their child learns a lesson</p>
<p>on the other hand, if the parents are aware that there is a serious issue, and the student begged to go back, there should be some talk of being in the loop</p>
<p>some don’t have 20 grand to waste</p>
<p>I don’t really see anything that Steel did wrong as a parent. I see a parent who cares deeply that their child go down a different and in Steel’s perception a “better path”. This is true heartbreak for a parent. I went through this with some very good friends and their child some years ago. Top of the class and accepted at a very top school in a very tough program. The child “failed” freshman year but the school allowed the child to return on academic probabion for the sophmore year. Second year, same story and the parents had to pull the financial plug which also to a parent, is closing a chapter on their own dreams. Fortunately, many of these really bright, smart kids, after a few years on their own, find their way. For my friends, after a few years their child returned to a lesser school across the country. The parents are not paying and the child is. This child/adult will most likely graduate this June in a major that while not as prestigious or academically challenging as the age 18 program is very closely aligned. I hope that I am never in Steel’s shoes with any of my boys, but if I am I hope I have the courage and fortitude to “do the right thing” and pull the plug so to speak. Remember when these kids were learning to walk and you’d hang on to their hands while they were stretched over their heads, then you were hang on less tight, all the time fearing that if you let go they would topple over and hurt themselves. Well eventually you let go and they might have fallen, but sooner or later everyone of our kids learned to walk…some at 9 months, some at 15 months…</p>
<p>for instance- if you are a co-signer on a credit card, you see month to month what is going on, and month to month you can handle it</p>
<p>why is it we don’t think parents of kids who are failing out have that same right, and that the student who is given a second chance or is on probation, why shouldn’t those parents be able to “bug” their student</p>
<p>seeing the deadlines, well in three weeks allthe money is gone, and the kid could still be out, while if the parent had a clue earlier in the process THEIR debt would be less</p>
<p>it isnot just the kids consequences here, it is an entire family</p>
<p>I am not saying keep funding, not at all, I am saying once the kid blew it, and the parents gave a second chance, those parents were drawn into that students life by the students own actions</p>
<p>and thus, the parents have the right to bug that student, as this is what the STUDENT himself created- </p>
<p>a while back, I found out my 16 yo D lied to me about where she was, first big lie that I knew about-and where she was was a big big no-no</p>
<p>Were my only choices to keep her home, or to just ignore it? No, my third choice was to tell her I lost my trust in her, and that for quite awhile, when she went out, I needed to hear from her evey hour, that I needed to know when she was changing locations, that she had lost some of the freedoms she had earned, and too bad about it- she then had a choice, to either abide by my restrictions and checking in etc, or not go out- but that in time, proving she was to be trusted again, the restrictions would be less</p>
<p>I gave her that second chance, and she learned from it…the OP did the same, gave the second chance, and tried to stand back, but then realized they couldn’t, the second chance didn’t work</p>
<p>but should the parents just hold off until the end of the semester? or should they step in</p>
<p>if the student isn’t going to classes, etc, how is he filling his time?</p>
<p>do we wait until it gets so bad that something horrid happens?</p>
<p>guess some people think so</p>
<p>I can’t understand a kid who would totally ignore his parents calls. Luckily I don’t have that problem. I have 2 D’s in college and my calls are always returned. They do get busy ans we have our moments but ignoring you is just totally disrespectful. I wish I had the answer but this is a hard one. I definately would not send any more money. When he came home for xmas break I would sit his a$$ down and set him straight. If his grades were passing then he is taking care of business and if they aren’t then he needs to understand the consequences. The loans will be due if he drops out so how will he pay? Show him the kind of income he will need to make to pay his loands. If he flunks out does he have a backup plan. good luck</p>
<p>Please refrain from harsh judgement. It is difficult enough as it is. Now is not the time to point fingers. Most of us are not wiser. We are simply more blessed.</p>