<p>OP, just remind your D that it is her dad’s job to make her life “alivinghellonearth” and her job to resist all efforts to control her. The world is as it should be.</p>
<p>hey curmudge- you on facebook?
;)</p>
<p>Home for college sees a lot of changes. They get fast used to not having to tell anyone about change of plans- ( although my daughter did make a spinny dial for outside her room freshman year- it showed friends where she was * library/commons/inside room doing homework- do not disturb/ inside room- OK to knock, etc) & I did remind her that if she had a change of plans when living with roommates, to at least leave a note so that if she was never heard from again, we would have some idea where to start looking.</p>
<p>Her friends took it very seriously- so seriously that one dormie with whom she had prearranged plans- waited outside her door for an hour without knocking, because she forgot to change it to- safe to disturb!-</p>
<p>But it does sound like your H is a little high strung. My H is high strung but he thinks I am overreacting if D usually responds to emails in a few days & I hadn’t had calls or emails returned in a week, checked our cell bill online and she hasn’t used the phone in a few days.
I was ready to drive down to Portland. ( but she eventually responded to an email- she had been at a friends and forgot her charger) :rolleyes:</p>
<p>When the kids are home under my roof I do ask for a bit of contact while home. If they see they are going to be out after midnight I ask for a call or text just to let me know they will be extra late. I hate waking up for my nightly potty break to find no cars in the driveway. If I call the cell phone and don’t get an answer, I tend to worry. If they let me know they are going to be out very late, I seem to sleep better.</p>
<p>Usually the kids are at a friends house watching movies, but there are nights they go to a bar to meet up with a large group of high school friends. As they are over 21 I do not feel I need to tell them what time to be in, but they do understand they are now guest in my home and owe me the respect by phoning when late. I have no complaints from either kids and when I do end up calling them at 3:00 in the morning, they do apologize for now calling earlier.</p>
<p>The hardest part for my D is that she is so responsible that she feels penalized for being out of contact for a short time. Of course, had her friend not called, we would not have called D at all (or at least for many hours). It was unfortunate that it happened. D’s reaction, at least for the moment, is to say that she will just be a little less in touch. Not a good answer and one that left me saying then don’t expect the monthly checks to be deposited. The truth is, my D likes/needs frequent contact as much as I do, so I know that the threat is a bit hollow. The problem is really my H, who worries about everything and always has, and, yes, there are clearly childhood experiences that contributed to it (such as a father who did not always come home at night, which left the kids standing at the window waiting).</p>
<p>Ancient history:
My parents let me go to college in a foreign country at the age of 17. In those days, there was one payphone per floor and letters took about a week to arrive. And I did not get to the post office right away to get the appropriate stamps to write home. My parents had to possess their soul in patience for a couple of weeks after letting their little girl go off on the big jet plane. They survived; so did I.
Cell phones are like an umbilical cord (even when it’s attached to dad rather than to mom).
EDIT to add: I agree with 07Dad. Did you really threaten to withhold the monthly checks, even if it is an empty threat? Wow! Just because your D did not call when you think she should? And you only thought of it because someone called looking for her?
Shaking my head in disbelief.</p>
<p>In all fairness, marite and 07, I think the overthetop response (as to yanking the moolah) was tit for tat in their tete a tete. (Where are the dang accent buttons on this thing?)</p>
<p>I agree, mudge. It is so hard to have a quick, witty comeback ready when necessary. </p>
<p>I texted my younger s to see if they made it to the condo in Colo ok (their flight was late, arrived at midnight and they were going to drive with their friend to the slopes, about a 2 1/2 hr drive, that night to avoid the impending snowstorm that dumped about 8" ) Anyway. His response to me was something like “The car broke down on the side of the road and we are running low on food. Morale is low but its ok because we are drifting in and out of consciousness”. I texted back “write a book”. I don’t know if my retort would have been as tongue in cheek if the conversation was over the phone or face to face.</p>
<p>curm–I see the Daughter’s response, i.e., to suggest backing off the “in constant contact” mode, as a not unreasonable reaction to to freak out meltdown by a grown man for what the mom acknowleges was
. Seems it is now time to ween dad from the parent-child relationship and start developing a young adult-father relationship, i.e., one where the father is a sourse of advise and counsel WHEN it is sought NOT the watchman.</p>
<p>Then OP states:
Mom thinks that cutting back on the contact comment is a “threat.” I wonder if OP views it as a threat because the idea of less contact is threatening to OP.</p>
<p>To me, it sounds like the 19 y.o. is the only one addressing the problem — the umbilical cord syndrome.</p>
<p>Isn’t the problem the fact that there was no tete a tete? Had D been at home, the H would not have gone round the bend.
The funny thing is that the less real cords there are,the longer and stronger the virtual umbilical cord is. When there were no phones, one had to wait for letters. When there were no cell phones but only landlines, parents did not expect their kids to be available at all times.</p>
<p>I have question. Suppose you had a similar scenario to the OP but your child (a minor) ended up being taken to a police station because he or she witnessed a crime. How would you feel then? This happened to my son, and I was not called by the police, and my son did not call me, because he felt that he could not call me (don’t know why). He did return my numerous and frantic calls to his cell phone with one mysterious text message which said that he is fine, he will explain later, and that he cannot talk now. He was out past the time we agreed that he would come home. Also, I had called the parents of the child he was supposed to be visiting and they said that my son was not there (There was a very reasonable explanation for that. My son was not trying to be deceptive).</p>
<p>I don’t see the similarities between the two scenarios. In your S’s case, he did not return home by the time he was expected to, and so you had every reason to be concerned (even panicked). In your place, I would have been frantically trying to reach him (and told him that, if he were taken in by the police again, to definitely ask to call his parents/lawyer). The OP’s H only panicked because a friend of his D could not reach her (for a very innocuous reason). He seems to expect the cell phone to be on all the time.</p>
<p>I guess that I (and H to a lesser extent) am a lot more laid back. I want to know what Ss are doing, but it’s more from nosiness than wanting to control anything. S1 usually responds to calls promptly, but i know he is sometimes at work, has a friend in whose basement apt. there is little cell phone reception, or in a place where it is noisy, so I don’t panic (and never have) when he doesn’t respond immediately.</p>
<p>S2 is good at texting, but only in response to my messages or when he needs anything. However, when we do talk and I ask him what he’s doing, his standard response is “drinking and carousing.” Knowing he doesn’t drink, it’s our standard joke. It usually means he’s trying to get some sleep.</p>
<p>Marite, I guess the similarity is in the panick, the thinking of all the possible situations (ie: car accidents, kidnapping, robbery and assault, etc.). I guess the similarity is being concerned and not being able to contact your child to make sure that they are okay. In the OP’s case it turned out fine, but there could have been a problem. In my situation, my child was not where he was supposed to be, and ended up too close to trouble for my comfort level (being near a crime was not his fault, but straying from where he said he would be without checking in was his fault. Also, not opening his mouth to say that he needs to let his parents know that he is with police is his fault, but he did not want to “alarm” us!).</p>
<p>The reason our parents didn’t worry/panic before the age of cell phones is because it was also the age before Adam Walsh/Etan P. (sorry, forgot his last name) was on the nightly news (not to mention that college girl who disappeared in the carribean during spring break recently). I remember hearing about these poor families just before I became a mother in the mid-80’s. This was also just about the time of all those child sex abuse cases in the day care centers (most of which were eventually dismisssed years later, as I recall). Who here hasn’t been effected as a parent by all those stories? Of course we panic if we can’t find our children! Cell phones just makes it worse because it sets up the expectation that constant contact=safety. (So, if they’re out of touch then all kinds of horrible things must have happened.)</p>
<p>I got into the habit of sleeping with my cell phone AND land line on my bedside table after my S got arrested and tried to call me on my cell for his one call, but of course I didn’t hear it because it was in my purse. He didn’t leave a message and since I didn’t recognize the number, I didn’t know who had called. I spent all night calling all his friends trying to find him (this was back when he was 16). He had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Talk about panic – when I finally heard from him at 6 am, I was overjoyed to hear his voice and that he was “only” arrested. (A much better alternative to what my imagination had cooked up, believe me.)</p>
<p>As I said, you had every reason to be concerned, even panicked since you expected your son to be back at a certain time and he was not and did not contact you to tell you what was happening. In your situation, I, too, would have been panicked. What could you or I have done besides what you did, i.e. contact the person you thought would have seen your S most recently? Hard to say, isn’t it.</p>
<p>I would suggest having identification at all times so that if one is in an accident, one can be identified and relative contacted. It’s similar to the emergency contacts card that one fills out for children in k-12. Your story makes me think that parents should tell their children what to do if detained whether they were mere bystanders or were arrested for some reason: they should ask, and if necessary demand, to contact their parents or, if the parents are not available, some other adult who will be able to arrange things (such as a lawyer). Thanks for raising this issue.</p>
I think your daughter was absolutely right in thinking this, and that it’s what she should actually do. Her mistake was saying it. She should have said, “I’ll do my best to keep in touch as much as is reasonable.” The weaning process has to be handled carefully.</p>
<p>With the exception of a very few posters, it seems to be the thought that cell phones are essential to having Johnny or Janie be safe, or at least to let mommie and/or daddy believe the kids are safer.</p>
<p>Developing street smarts and/or awareness in your kids? Not so important since the phone is there to “protect” them. While I have seen this in regard to a few male friends of my son, this really seems to be a place where many young girls are left without these valuable skills. Why think about where you are and who you’re with since you can always call someone to come get you if it turns “weird?”</p>
<p>Same thing seems to occur with the parents and kids developing coping skills regarding daily living. Are there REALLY, REALLY BAD things that can happen to a person every day? Yep, but if that is the person’s focus and it turns to fear, life becomes very frightening. The phone becomes a talisman against the Evil out there. To me, if one isn’t careful the phone is a reminder to be scared.</p>
<p>Also when did parenting become synonymous with “rescuing?” The example of the kid getting arrested is a case in point. My father took my brother and I to “visit” the county jail lock-up when we reached our 12th birthday. He explained that this was where you were taken if you got arrested and that you could figure on having to spend at least a night before getting bail. I still recall the smell of caged men and the dead look in some of the inmate’s eyes. It was something that I flashed on as a teenager when someone suggested something that was on the edge.</p>
<p>I had a few friends who got to spend that night in jail and as to all but one, that was all it took to convience them not to get close to the edge. My question is why do parents want to interfere with this process? Usually (not always), the kid is in jail for a valid reason.</p>
<p>I agree that with a lot of parents, it is a weaning process, but I find it hard to accept that it is the young adult that has to be weaning the parent rather than the other way around.</p>
<p>Oh, I think kids definitely have to wean their parents. I remember when we first got married, my wife told her mother that she wouldn’t be able to call her every day–it was a pretty big deal at the time.</p>
<p>I guess I was fortunate. Both my wife and I had mothers who expressed that their MIL had caused problems in their marriage by being too involved with our dad’s lives after they married. </p>
<p>Our mothers never dropped by without calling or called more than every week or so. It made it very easy for us to call them on occassion and get together for dinner or to play cards. They had a life that included us but did not revolve around us.</p>
(Where are the dang accent buttons on this thing?)</p>