Amazing how relevant I suddenly become when I suspend DS’s cellphone service.
The only method I ever knew for bypassing pay phone charges was the long-distance phone call from Europe, on one gettone. You could shout something really fast before you got cut off.
You call collect and ask for a certain person, your parents refuse to accept the charges but now they know you’re at a phone, and then they call you back? Is that what you mean?
I don’t remember EVER calling.
My roommate and I used to lightly tease our 3rd roommate for calling his parents every weekend. This was in the days before cellphones so he’d call from the landline in our dorm room and we’d all get to hear his side of the conversation.
W will frequently ask me, “Is it too soon to call (or text) D?” Invariably my answer is, “Yes, it’s too soon” since we hear from D in one way or another (call, text, email, instagram, etc) almost every day. Call me crazy, but I think college-age kids should be calling their friends for regular chit chat and their parents only once or twice a month. For me as a dad that’s a sign of independence and a job well done as a parent, although I realize it’s very different for moms and their D’s.
Wouldn’t have worked on me.
Since I’m not a phone person and find the idea of seemingly being connected nearly 24/7 judging by what I’ve seen from avid cell users of all ages to be an annoyance…my feeling is “go nuts!” while I and most male classmates like myself continue to not maintain contact for several weeks at a stretch.
Then again, I wasn’t the undergrad who could or would ask my parents for help/things as 1. They weren’t in a financial position to provide help for things at the time anyways and 2. In my mind and those of most male classmates would regard asking for parental help as revealing we haven’t mastered the “independence” part yet and thus, suggest they are well within their rights to perceive us as dependent kiddies rather than independent young adults. Most of us would rather endure the lack of something* rather than reveal that to parents and thus, lose that respect.
- Sometimes this actually provided an opportunity to discover and refine our level of ingenuity/resourcefulness....such as finding campus/fraternity parties, wedding receptions and librarian conventions to crash for free food/drink/socializing opportunities. :)
My ex pays for our adult D’s phone since it costs him only a few dollars extra. He believes that this entitles him to cut off her service if she doesn’t respond in a timely manner. She recently missed an important call from work and a time-sensitive message from me because of this. It does not keep her closer to him, it drives a wedge between them. While he’s getting his way in hearing from her the demanded number of times, she’s growing resentful when he causes her to miss important information after she misses some arbitrary timeline that appears to be a moving target. I would NEVER cut off my kid’s phone, especially a girl who might actually use it for safety reasons, like say, calling a taxi to get to or from work in the wee hours. But that’s just me.
If I were the adult daughter of a control freak father who threatens me with cutting off the cellphone, I’d cut the non existent cord first. Get a cheap Blu phone of Amazon and create a Ting account.
It might be more common for a girl to need a phone for safety but it’s not exclusively a girl thing.
I’d get my own phone as well if I my parent was cutting it off. Especially if it started affecting my job.
Back in the 80’s we had a phone and an answering machine in our dorm room (the answering machine was put there by one of my roommate’s moms, who lived about 30 min from campus). I don’t remember calling home a lot, but I also wasn’t homesick and my parents were not the kind who expected contact.
As to getting around payphones, I ended up moving to Italy after my freshman year of college, and the pensiones I stayed at had WATS numbers scribbled above the payphone. You dialed that number, then you dialed the number you wanted to call, and voila, contact. It occurs to me now that those were probably stolen wats numbers. I remember thinking it was nice of the pensione to provide them (I was SO naive).
Both DD’s attend summer camps for weeks on end. I ask them for a quick text each night saying basically doing fine, goodnight, which they seem to be ok with and we said upfront it was what we expected. They said they don’t like to skype or talk on the phone because hearing me or their dad makes them feel homesick, which makes sense to me.
One year older dd asked me to send her a loaf of my banana bread, and she said when she opened it the smell reminded her of home and she burst into tears (a very rare occurrence with the older one), so we don’t do that anymore-just random wacky amazon care packages. I’m ok with whatever the kids need to cope emotionally and do well when they get to college-whether that’s a lot of contact or next to none-they know we’re here for them.
I thought the woman in the article was sending very confusing, passive-aggressive messages to her daughter. Prudence was spot-on there. If you need your kid to text you once a night, say, "I need you to text me “I’m fine goodnight” when you get in so I know you’re ok. I don’t think this would be appropriate for college kids, but for 14-16 yo I definitely needed it, and my kids understand me well enough to be, um, supportive of their mom’s overactive worry center of the brain.
The mom needs to ask the kid what kind of contact she’s comfortable with, and go from there. The whole “no presents for you unless you’re nice to me” thing is really petty and sad, and is going to seriously make that kid want to get as far away from the mom as she can.
When I was at university in Australia in the early 80s I had to wake up very early (due to the 16 hour time difference), walk downtown to the GPO - the General Post Office - to make an appointment for a three-minute phone call, wait in line until my number was called, fork over AUS$11 for those precious three minutes, and then once connected talk very quickly to my parents. But not too quickly. If we talked over each other the signal got jumbled.
My freshman D, on the other hand, doesn’t even have to roll out of bed to text a “Hi Dad”!
You often talk about your high standards of behavior. This is the second time I’ve seen you talk about crashing weddings to get free food and drink. That’s not something to brag about, nor does it confirm that you are/were on any behavioral high ground. In fact, it sounds like something all those frat daddies you despise would do.
As a tangent to the dog/cats text, I sent my son a pic of the new Patagonia catalog; snapshot of a hiker dangling from the hand claws of a smiling T-Rex. It was enough to inspire the requisite “Ha!” All is well for another week.
Patagonia Catalog Cover from “Unexpected: a Retrospective of Patagonia’s Outdoor Photography” book. Just in case you need another pic in your arsenal.
I think I’ve been watching too many crime dramas. To me, icing someone suggests a cold dock and cement overshoes, but I live in NY so maybe that goes with the territory.
I read the original letter. I think that weekly calls and texting every couple of days is excessive. We raise our kids to be independent. I can’t imagine punishing them for it. If I discovered they were crashing people’s parties and formal dinners, I’d have some strong words for them. Otherwise, I’d let them go about their business.
There are other options for communicating besides calling and texting. Social media can be a good tool for staying connected. My nieces and nephews don’t have the time or money to call each other often, so they connect online. Most of what I know about what they’re doing comes from posts on social media pages. They’re a great way to get ideas for holiday gifts too.
I had an internship in China back in the earlier 90s for eight months and made only one or two very expensive short calls back home during that time. I wrote a running letter and once it got a few pages long, made copies for various friends and family and sent it off. I called it “News From A Broad.”
I don’t think a weekly phone call is excessive, but I’d approach it from: I’d like to touch base with you live for a few minutes once a week. What works best with your schedule, so we can pencil it in.
My H and I had different philosophies. He called every few days - and still calls the kids every few days now that they’re launched - no agenda, just to say hello. I tend not to call and wait for them to call me so I don’t get accused of helicoptering!
I think D is headed in the direction of getting her own plan. Up until now, free has been worth the hassle, but this cut-off may have swayed her. I’m sure it never crossed my ex’s mind that D might actually need to hear from work before her shift, but she’s an assistant manager now and that’s exactly when they might call!
When I was in college there was one pay phone in our dorm of 100+ people, no answering machine. Whoever was walking by when it rang answered it and left a message on the person’s white board on the door. You could rent a phone for your room, and one year my roommate and I did that. Kids would pay us to call home at whatever outrageous rates they charged for long distance back then.
Important point: the first line of the letter to Prudie from the mom specifies that the daughter is at an Ivy League University. CC parent? Would the lack of communication be acceptable at State U?
Ha ha! Yeah, it really is irrelevant where the kid goes to school!
Not likely.
Most fraternity members from my observation would feel that’s beneath them due to their mostly higher SES backgrounds and the corresponding financial largesse which comes with it along with the fact that it’s not necessary for them as they often throw campus parties which have all the food/drink to their heart’s content.
Incidentally, while my friends and I did it for the free food/drink opportunities, I knew of many other students on that and other campuses who did it as a protest against the heavily social dominance and exclusionary attitudes of pan-Hellenic Greek organizations on some campuses and for some political activist students of the progressive-left//hippie/neo-hippie* orientation…another way to protest organizations which epitomized the conservative upper/upper-middle class establishment.
- From my observation, parents of this persuasion would be horrified if their children opted to pledge or accept membership offers to a pan-Hellenic Greek organization. And several HS classmates and many other college students during my college years did so**/tried to do so precisely to pull an Alex P. Keaton on their progressive-left/hippie parents who were protesting such symbols of the establishment back in the '60s.
** The ones who succeeded often got the sometimes exorbitant dues money from grandparents or conservative relatives who used this as an opportunity to help those kids “stick it” to their progressive-left/former hippie parents.