Do you let you high schooler visit older friends at colleges? You shouldn't.

Parents Forum
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<p>I have been thinking about that too, Ellie. I notice often how different my kids are from some of the high schoolers who post here. If they even were on this site, which they’re not, it would never occur to them to infiltrate the parents’ section and demand attention with rude, blaming attacks. In fact, I don’t think they are capable of being such arrogant know-it-alls around adults or even their peers. </p>

<p>Back to the subject at hand, I am with you that it is a gradual process of trust-building as they prepare to leave the nest. It’s not like they just turn 18 and suddenly become confronted with adult situations (and instantly have the ability to handle them). Kids these days have to learn how to say no to drugs and alcohol and unwanted sexual advances starting in middle school, in many cases. They need to learn how to use social media responsibly. Most of all, they need to learn how to keep themselves safe. Treating them like 10-year-olds and not giving them increasing freedom as they earn it is not, in my opinion, the way to help them.</p>

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<p>I don’t think the OP ever said he was perfect, he was mearly relaying information on events he has personally witnessed and he’s trying to warn parents of girls. I’m beginning to think the parents he’s trying to warn either don’t care or are as naive as their daughters. </p>

<p>Googling your kid is not stalking - you should care if they are in ‘Girls Gone Wild’ - a potential future employer or the colleges they apply to sure might care. If you aren’t friends with your kid on social media, you should be and you should check your kids profile and their friends. You think that’s being a stalker? Then don’t be that shocked parent when the cops bring your kid home, when you are talking your daughter to the GYN for a list of ailments too long to list here, when your kid is the next victim of molly (but they were so smart), etc. have open lines of communication and try to know what’s going on. Your bird is preparing to leave the nest, but you need to be close by if they begin to struggle to fly and to ward off the predators just licking their chops.</p>

<p>Remember the OP is just a kid himself. He’s discovered behavior that makes him uncomfortable and protective of his girlfriends - his first thought on how to solve the problem is to reach out to the parents of his female friends, to warn parents of girls. That certainly is not to say that the parents of the college boys shouldn’t also be appalled regarding their sons’ behavior.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure why visiting a college campus automatically means exposure to toxic behavior.
My oldest was in a sub free dorm, because it was quiet & clean.
Knitting while someone read Harry Potter to them was a favorite activity.
Smaller student body than the high school my youngest eventually attended.
I visited there many times including on weekend nights, & didn’t see inappropriate behavior.
They also had adult supervision.
Every employee on campus had a stipend to spend on student engagement.
The housekeeper in my Ds dorm made them coffee and cookies. She even lent me her car to go to the grocery store.
I recognize that each campus has it’s own atmosphere which can even change from year to year.</p>

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<p>This is actually a disgusting and offensive sentiment. Name ONE PERSON here who wants their daughter to be drunk and passed out and taken advantage of by older boys, or to come home pregnant or infected with an STD. You forget that most parents here went to college ourselves. We are not as naive as you think.</p>

<p>I also find it a bit curious that you consistently–here and under your former user names–blame mothers, not fathers, and girls, not boys, for everything that is wrong with the world. </p>

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<p>Late to the party as usual, but here goes: OP, as a parent with much more life experience than you, here is my view on what you’re trying to say.</p>

<p>1)Your concern is valid, but wagging your finger at parents and calling all of us clueless or enabling twits is not going to cause many of us to take you seriously.</p>

<p>2) From my readings here, most CC parents are the parents of driven, successful students who were role models in HS and on into college. Many have kids who have graduated and are working in plum jobs and doing well out in the real world. They’re not ignorant of which you post.</p>

<p>3)The things you’re concerned about have been going on since time immemorial. My GRANDPARENTS, who would now be 100+ years old told stories of youthful indiscretions. Yes, these are not things we want our kids to do, but it’s not all or nothing. Things happen and kids grow up and grow out of such behavior. Most parents do talk to their kids about making good choices. From what I can tell, most CC parents have been successful in steering their kids AWAY from bad choices.</p>

<p>4)Disagreeing with you doesn’t mean we are stupid, mocking you or attacking you.</p>

<p>5)There are MANY students both in HS and college who do NOT participate in such behavior. I am the parent of one such kid. Her days, like those of her friends, are filled with studying, time-consuming EC’s and activities surrounding church and school. Some such students gravitate to substance-free dorms, campuses with curfews or strict rules about dorm visitors. We will be visiting some of those schools this summer. Perhaps such schools would be a better fit for you.</p>

<p>6)Please stop slut-shaming. The young men involved in the activities that disturb you so much are even more at fault than the girls. The men are older, more experienced, and know exactly what they’re doing. That is why many parents try to give their girls tools to cope with being exposed to these guys. </p>

<p>7)Many high schools have senior projects or allow students to start clubs. Maybe you can channel your concerns into some kind of “street smarts” project at your school. My D’s HS had an all-day symposium on social media awareness, cyberbullying, etc. It was created by a senior as part of his senior project. He invited victims, law enforcement and experts to be guest speakers and the students were greatly affected by it.</p>

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<p>I get that when you see behavior like this, it’s easy to shake your head at the parents, but if you’re so concerned about this and seem to know so much about the situation, why don’t you DO something about it? Make sure those high school girls get home safely and don’t get taken advantage of by frat guys. Tell their parents about what is going on. Call the cops on the party where underage drinking is happening. Report the frat. Be the good person who makes sure that the person who passed out is okay. Even just being a designated driver can help. And then maybe in high school and college, you can participate in (or create) programs that try to deal with these issues. Ones that try to teach about how to be safe at parties or about consent or about resources for those struggling with addiction or drug abuse past emotional/sexual/physical abuse or about the potential things these activities can result in, or safe rides programs that help people get home safely. You could even try to raise awareness among parents. When social media on the internet first really started becoming popular, many parents had no idea about the cyberbullying or sexting/nude pics that was going around until it really started reaching media attention. Some parents need a push to really understand the extent of what is going on.</p>

<p>It’s one thing to blame the parents, but it’s another thing entirely to step up and try to do something about it. Maybe your efforts won’t reach everyone, but if they help someone, then it’s well worth it.</p>

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<p>Something that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned here: OP went immediately from “Do you let your high schooler” to “your daughter”. Much of the historical and current oppression of women in the world is predicated on the idea that men are animals and women need to be protected from them. </p>

<p>OP suggests not allowing ANY girls to visit college friends as a means of trying to protect SOME girls from doing bad things. How is that not a rationale for oppression? And once having managed to achieve this goal - what next? Women should not be allowed to do X because bad things could happen to them and no one wants that. We can rationalize our way all the way up to the Taliban itself. </p>

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<p>Laxripper, may I assume you are male?
Here’s the thing: Teenaged girls, even as far back as the dark ages when I was one, have an astonishing amount of self-agency and are far less naive than the teenaged boys for whom girls are merely a wetdream would like to think. Seventeen year old girls are capable of making the decision to have sex without it being a case of being preyed upon by some evil, dastardly male. They are capable of making decisions on their own, both good and bad, well-thought-out and impulsive, mild and extreme. They are capable of remembering to never let their drink out of their sight (to avoid tampering) and choosing to drink until they’re senseless.
Where parenting comes in is far before the college visit (or high school dance or hour after school spent at a friend’s or or or…). It comes in teaching young women (and their brothers) that each of them has this agency, and in teaching them not to abuse the agency of others. It is as important to teach our sons not to rape as to teach our daughters not to be victims. It is important to teach our children how to make wise decisions, and also to give them the latitude to sometimes learn by experience rather than lecture. And it is important to give them the tools to find their own moral code, and to ignore those who would like to brand them idiot or slag or druggie to feed their own sense of moral superiority. And it is most important, IMO/E, to teach them to have as their primary concern their own honor and their own behavior, and not that of others.
Mileage varies, of course.</p>

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<p>How can parents let their boys go to college when they are going to act this way ! Parents should keep their boys home from college so that they don’t go away to college and become predatory animals! Then college campuses would be safe for all the girls.</p>

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<p>OP, despite what I posted above, parents should talk seriously to their students of both sexes about potential situations they might be faced with, and how to do the right thing in such situations…beginning with avoiding them if possible</p>

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<p>Thirty five years ago I visited a college campus (Harvard) and drank daiquiris with a group of boys - friends of the young woman I was staying with. They also made a flame thrower out of an aerosol can. I didn’t have sex with any of them. It was kind of reassuring to see that Harvard kids didn’t study all the time. I later attended Harvard and one of the biggest potheads in my dorm graduated summa cum laude in mathematics. </p>

<p>As for my kids - neither of them drinks. Really. I know because they spit it out when they’ve taken a glass accidentally. I don’t have access to much of their facebook pages. Some of their friends use pseudonyms of facebook for the sillier photos, so I’ve seen some partying by following up on those posts. I was always up when my kids got home from parties and they certainly appeared to be sober. </p>

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<p>I, for one, am shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, to find out that this kind of behaviour goes on on college campuses!!</p>

<p>But seriously, I’m wondering why the OP thinks he needs to “warn” parents that this kind of stuff goes on? We all know that it does. BUT, not every kid (girl or boy) that visits a college campus takes part. As parents, we should all teach our kids boundaries and respect for themselves and others. Then we send them off and pray for the best. I would never try to shelter my kids from the “bad” stuff in life. Rather, I tried to expose and educate my kids so that they can make better decisions for themselves. Both kids have made mistakes and, hopefully, learned valuable lessons. </p>

<p>OP, instead of just trying to indiscriminately “warn” parents, why don’t you try doing something to change the culture on campus? Join groups that advocate more appropriate, sober fun and educate your fellow students about the long-term consequences of reckless behaviour.</p>

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<p>vocab question: what’s “doing molly”?</p>

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<p><a href=“Parents & Educators | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)”>Parents & Educators | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA);

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<p>@MYOS1634 MDMA/extasy</p>

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<p>Thanks!
I’m questioning why OP hasn’t turned in the kids who supply the drugs then. Even on a college campus, supplying drugs to minors would be a crime, right? Or perhaps OP is scared of taking a stand and would rather say it’s the parents’ fault (juvenile for a HS junior, as it’s more like what 7th-8th graders do.) OP seems to have disappeared though.
I also realize that a 17 year old kid may think a 20 year old kid is “old” and “mature” but vituperating online instead of trying to find a way to do something about the problem is, at the very least, unproductive.
So it was a thread for my vocab at least. :)</p>

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<p>Yes, no one should allow their kids to go to college because there is some non-zero chance that they do something stupid there. Thank you TC for explaining this to everyone.</p>

<p>/Sarcasm</p>

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<p>This was a concern of mine for two reasons. </p>

<p>One, I REMEMBER this going on in the early 80s with girls visiting our college. One pair I remember distinctly were both 18 yr old seniors, top academic overachieving students, and a whole lot more experienced than the nerd guys that they hit on. They were going to college in 5 short months anyway. What were their parents going to do that they hadn’t already done. </p>

<p>Two, I have two daughters who we sent on overnight college visits. I have to assume that they behaved themselves. I have no evidence that they didn’t. But if they didn’t, what exactly could we do about it. We definitely have no say in what they actually do in college. </p>

<p>Girls old enough to be visiting colleges are generally too old to be punishing. You can only hope that you’ve raised them with good values and enough sex education so that they will be responsible. </p>

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<p>Yes, it is certainly possible that all of these terrible risky things can happen when you permit your college kid to visit older friends at college. it can also happen locally with high school peers. College visits can be very tame too. It’s not like every single college visit is one filled with debauchery. Some are and some aren’t. In many case, the kids are going to be going off to college to be confronted with all of this in less than a year anyways. It can be am early warning alert if problems arise at such visits.</p>

<p>True story. My cousin and his wife were all set to send stepson to state U. It was going to be a financial stretch to allow him to board at college. And the kid blew it before he got there which, yes, was a huge shame and a downer for all. Instead of going to Flagship U, kid had to do two years at local U and show he was responsible enough to go off to college. Saved my cousin more than half the cost of kid going off to the college and bombing out which was what two of the kids’ friends did whose parents could not bear to stop the momentum. Now two others went on and did all right. But given that small group it was a 50/50 chance that kid would have gone off, gotten into trouble, not done his work, given he did not have the discipline to behave before he even got there. Could not wait to start into all of the trouble. So he did get to hold off two more years, older and wiser, and understanding that the money was hard earned and not going to be spent for party time or any sense that it was going that direction. I know two kids who partied themselves to their graves after going to college, It didn’t take a preview at high school to set them on that path either, but sometimes an incident that has a big implication and consequence that is not so deadly and permanent can make a big difference. There are not as many problems that occur, serious ones any ways, percentage wise during college visits as there are when the kids go to college, so when a kid is so a-raring to find contraband and trouble on a visit, a time out might well be in order. Not grown up enough to go away to college. </p>

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<p>In light of what has recently happened at UCSB, I am wondering how much of the OP’s rant might be jealousy/discomfort at the “fun” he sees going on at his university visits, that he doesn’t quite know how to get involved in/be invited to participate in.</p>