<p>Six months out from HS graduation, my oldest son is very independent, but sometimes I feel like he should be running his plans by his dad and me rather than just announcing what he will be doing. For example, over Christmas break, he and a group of friends planned a 2-day camping/rock climbing trip several hours from home. He basically told us he was going on the trip, rather than asking permission. We did end up getting detailed information and made it clear that we were “allowing” him to go, but part of me feels like he should have asked us first before planning. At the same time, he is very responsible, has a great group of friends, does extremely well in school, and will be going to college across the country in a few months. How much independence do you give a HS senior? What is “normal” here? I don’t want to be a crazy, over-protective parent, but I don’t want to be a pushover, either.</p>
<p>if you have not been a pushover before then i doubt you will be now. i believed they will be gone in a few months and let them go- you do not want a kid who suddenly has ‘freedom’ at college- does not make for good behavior. i was pretty liberal and none of them went ‘crazy’ with the sudden freedom. he did tell you.</p>
<p>My d went on a kayaking trip the beginning of senior year.
It turned out that it was just she and another girl going, because of everyones schedule.
I agreed, but then I went too!( separate cars, campsites etc)
I think they would have been fine, but I worry.
( she also asked for permission)</p>
<p>My S turned 18 in Sept of his senior year in HS. Spring Break he asked me if it was OK if he accompany several other friends (male and female) to camp at a state park 200 miles away from home. I asked him if he was requesting money from me as part of this. He said No. I said I appreciated the courtesy of him asking but as long as he was financing it, it was no longer my call. </p>
<p>I asked if he was interested in hearing a couple of suggestions. He said yes. I said that he needed to make absolutely sure all the females were of age. I also asked him if his car and tires were in really good condition since having car trouble on the back roads would be a pain. He ended up buying 2 new tires before they left.</p>
<p>S had his own money since he had tutored since late middle school. He was going to completely on his own 725 miles away at college so for multiple reasons I bowed out his senior year. </p>
<p>S is now 25 and he usually informs me of significant events and, on occasions when I have an observation, he will tell me he is interested in hearing it.</p>
<p>You don’t have to say ‘yes’ to anything that involves your property, or your money.</p>
<p>I’d think of it this way ~ it’s not like you’re making any kind of mistake. If you can live with the relationship day-to-day, that’s the important thing. At this age parenting is not an obligation, it’s not something to be done ‘correctly’. You are building an adult relationship -though we have to put-up with considerate behavior being rather one sided for awhile.</p>
<p>I guess the abrupt transition from last year’s, “Mom, is it okay if I…” to this year’s, “I am going to…” is just a bit disconcerting :).</p>
<p>I didn’t allow a huge level of independence with my girls. I generally would agree with their plans, but they didn’t “tell” me that they were going somewhere or doing something. They consulted with me because we have/had a pretty complicated family situation. But I sill do the same with them and the oldest is 24 and fully employed and educated. For example, I will say “I am considering going to X or doing X on this date. Would that be a problem for you?” and I expect the same courtesy from them. Not permission, really, just coordination of schedules and logistics.</p>
<p>I totally get the whole asking vs telling thing. My daughter did that a lot her senior year. What I think she wanted was to communicate her plans as an adult, but not feel like she was asking for permission, even though she knew we did have veto power. So when she’d announce that she was going into Boston and then sleeping over at a friend’s house, for example, I’d just ask her to elaborate on the details, make sure her phone was charged, and tell her areas to avoid. If her plans involved inconvenience to us, such as picking her up at some ungodly hour in the months before she got her license, then I’d ask her to make other arrangements.</p>
<p>Like your son, she had really good judgment (and when she screwed up, she’d tell us about it after the fact!) never got in trouble, and was just generally a respectful kid all through high school. I think kids like this have earned their freedom by senior year. That’s the ideal time to practice it, since they’re still in the nest.</p>
<p>Once I turned 18 and finished high school, I could come and go as I pleased as long as I wasn’t asking to use the car they bought for me to use. (It was my car, but not my car.) If I was using the car they bought for me to use, I had to ask, until they gave it to me when I moved out after I graduated college. The rules didn’t completely change until I moved out and got my own car. I lived at home my first two years in college, over breaks the second two years, and for 9 months after graduation. </p>
<p>It sounds barbaric, and felt barbaric to me at the time, but it wasn’t really. It left me very motivated to move out as soon as possible. They are not using the same rules with my sister and she is not so motivated… time will tell what will happen!</p>
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<p>If he’s generally responsible and a good kid with a history of mostly good decisionmaking, that transition is a good thing. </p>
<p>Personally and in my own family, we’d be much more concerned about an 18+ person feeling the need to ask for permission for every single thing as in our minds, that’d demonstrate a troubling lack of independence and maturity. </p>
<p>Then again, part of this is having had to help some older friends in their 40’s with learning to take full charge of their own lives rather than being exceedingly dependent on older relatives or more decisive friends like yours truly. </p>
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<p>I was the same way. </p>
<p>Heck, there are still some stupid/screwed up things I did at 17-18 I haven’t told my parents about even now. Your D and my thought process is probably along the lines of “Why worry the parents about something in the past…especially when it was ultimately solved or so far in the past it no longer matters.”</p>
<p>We expect our high schooler and college kids to ask “permission” when they are in our home, and they all know our expectations. They don’t ask to do anything we wouldn’t approve of. But we’re not naive. I assume they do things at college that they wouldn’t want to share with us. Still, our house, our rules. Asking permission is more of a courtesy with our college kids - more of an “If it’s ok with you, I’m going to ……” We haven’t had to say “no” because they haven’t asked permission for anything stupid or against house rules.</p>
<p>I think the “I am going to bit” is really just a way of verbalising the changing relationship from parent-child to adult-adult. He’s clearly doing well and isn’t prone to doing anything spectacularly silly, so personally I’d let him get on with it - though if things go wrong I’d also expect him to dig himself out of trouble if at all possible, as that’s the flip side of being an adult. </p>
<p>To be fair, by the time I was about a year older than your son, I’d come home to my mother and told her that I’d bought plane tickets for a six month solo trip around Australia using my earnings, and went. There’s nothing quite like being entirely responsible for yourself on the other side of the world to make you grow up and act responsible - I highly recommend it! </p>
<p>For what it’s worth, the person who I think went the craziest, out of all the people I met in first year, when presented with freedom at college, was one whose parents had been exceedingly controlling, very religious, hadn’t let him drink etc. etc. As soon as he escaped he decided to use all of the freedoms at the same time. He drank far more than the rest of us, partied far more and so on. I don’t know how well he did academically, as he was more of a friend of a friend, but I doubt he did that well. Ditto one who had just left the relatively restrictive environment of boarding school and rapidly became a pothead who failed first year. </p>
<p>He’s clearly using his freedom well, so let him IMHO.</p>
<p>I’m with Barfly- in high school, I expect that they “ask” but I rarely say no, unless there is a compelling reason. I would have the questions regarding how to get a hold of him and where they are going. The asking becomes more of a formality that transitions into telling.
I’m not so naive that I would think, or want, college kids to ask me for permission to go everywhere, but I think it’s a good idea for safety and courtesy reasons to let someone know when you take a trip or travel somewhere out of the ordinary. I think it is courtesy to give some information to people who care about you.
If it involves my finances, then we need to discuss it.
I think there is a wide range of normal. Although the expectation is that they ask while in high school, “our house our rules” it’s a gradual transition.</p>
<p>Push over parents don’t normally have responsible, independent kids with a great group of friends and does well in school. Congratulations on having a kid who sounds he’ll do well when he’s far away from home and out of the watchful eyes of parents. And overly protective parents may never know the real plans that their kids have 'cause they won’t be told.
Actually, my kids were both responsible and I gave them a lot of freedom. They didn’t give me cause to worry and got freedom in return. They did ask prior actually doing something but not necessarily before having things planned–might as well take care of the details before the 'rents have to ask.</p>
<p>As long as I am still financially responsible for my kid, she’ll need to consult us before she could do anything major. Just because a kid is able to pay for a trip, it doesn’t mean he/she can be responsible for any bad consequences from taking such a trip. As an example, D2 decided she wanted to visit her friend in FL. The airline ticket cost $450, but due to the weather, her flight was cancelled, and we had to spend a lot of time and money to get her back in time to go back to school. I gave her permission to go, so I got her back next day. She couldn’t even get through the airline to get her ticket changed. The best she could do online was to return 3 days later.</p>
<p>Anyone who is staying with us, I expect to be informed of their schedule - when leaving/returning, if they are having meals with us or out. When my kids are home, I don’t care if they are 50, they’ll have to inform us their whereabouts.</p>
<p>Ema–post 9–maybe they were sticklers for car insurance rules.</p>
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<p>I’ve observed the same pattern with college classmates and even work colleagues. </p>
<p>The ones with the most restrictions/sheltering by parents end up going really wild in freshman year and/or are seriously lacking in decisiveness* and taking responsibility for making their own decisions. </p>
<p>And folks with such traits tend not to be respected by their peers…especially if they happen to be male. </p>
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<li>Constantly asking others for opinions on the most minor/elementary of decisions, changing their mind, vacillating, etc.</li>
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<p>Does anybody NOT know someone who grew up with restrictive parents who DIDN’T go nuts when all the restrictions were lifted? Double negative but you know what I mean.
I knew a few who went off the deep end with partying.
And I knew ones also who were straight A kids in HS and then fell apart in college without parents to remind them every two minutes about getting work done and constant nagging.</p>
<p>Gouf, I know several. I also knew one who didn’t really have rules in high school and still fell apart. </p>
<p>Once I got my own car and made my own money, there was really no need for permission. The idea of asking for “permission” to leave my own house is kind of foreign in my family (disclaimer: we are a very atypical family and in no way am I saying this works for everyone). If I wasn’t coming back overnight, I gave my parents a heads-up. I accidentally forgot to tell them that I was going on vacation for a week during my senior year of high school (spring break- I was already 18) until I was packing. Whoops! </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think there is any such thing as normal. My friends ran the spectrum from needing to ask permission, provide a detailed scheduled of where they were going, and provide several contact numbers all the way to those like me who just needed to give a “heads-up”. For us, it would’ve been much, much different if it was my parents’ car and/or I needed their money.</p>
<p>I am pretty strict about driving rules, mostly for liability reasons. DS, while a senior, just turned 17 and hasn’t had his license for a year quite yet, so he is not supposed to be driving other kids (this is the law in CA; not sure about other states). I know he has given friends occasional rides, but I try to hammer home the fact that it is illegal and compromises our insurance. He does have several friends whose parents don’t enforce these rules. We also ask him to be home by the legal curfew (11 pm) on school nights, mostly because he is constantly on the go and becomes an absolute bear when he doesn’t get enough sleep.</p>