Have College Freshmen Changed?

Modadunn
Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:56:04 +0000

We’ve tried to model fiscally responsible living and it looks like at least some of it stuck.



In my opinion, you have given your children a real gift. I would consider myself a failure as a parent if any of my kids end up feeling entitled and acting like it- even if they fit the definition on some level of the socioeconomic scale.

When it comes to things they want, it becomes more of a negotiation vs the immediate satisfaction of want. Our oldest is 25. She originally went to a private college and basically had a pretty good time - for a year. She then came home and went to CC for a year where she paid for any grade less than a C that came out of her summer job. She paid her own gas and social life. She waited tables on the weekend. She then decided she did not want to go to school and spent the next 2 1/2 years working and living in the real world. She had two jobs. She did not ask us for money because then we may have been deserving of an opinion on how she was living her life and the potential she was wasting. She had her car that we had given her in HS, she paid the insurance and her rent and on and on. The only thing we did was pay for health insurance (directly paid the premium to the company) until the office job she finally got had benefits and she qualified. At 24, she called us up and said she had decided to go back to school. She had already applied, did the whole financial aid thing and was going! She got decent financial aid with a few loans. She still waits tables (now it’s a really nice restaurant for the area) for some income. And now completely on her own, she made the deans list both semesters last year, aced summer school and is doing great this semester as well. My husband and I agree that we will pay the loans if she continues on this path, but we have not told her that … yet. But seriously? I don’t know who’s prouder… her for all that she’s accomplished without any help from us? Or us, for seeing some of it had stuck? While it was really hard sometimes to let her live her life, we had to trust that some of what we had taught her about the value of an education, character and integrity would eventually emerge!