So is the take home message from this really that parents need to be more intrusive into their college students’ lives?
I guess Dr. Phil would say that it takes two.
^^
Well, if the parents are paying, then yes. Don’t just blindly pay without knowing whether your child is really going to school.
I think until and unless you have been in the situation, you can’t know how you will react. And since I have been, I will only say that there is shock, disbelief but mostly a tremendous worry about self-harm, an overwhelming sense of personal parenting guilt and failure, and profound sorrow imagining how lonely and sad your child has been keeping up the charade. And relief that it’s all out in the open. Not to say there’s not plenty of trust to be rebuilt.
We tell our children the worst thing is to lie to us, but very often our reactions to the truth of their mistakes, shortfalls, and choices we don’t like does not support truth-telling. CC is full of threads where students are sharing their truth about their interests, their talents, their aptitudes, and getting only resistance and “while I pay the bills, you do what I want” from parents. And apart from that, our children are very human, and very young, and very dumb sometimes…they want to defer that moment where they’ve so disappointed us, and then they’re in too deep to feel safe fessing up. We send our kids off with pep talks and encouragement, when maybe they need a bit of disaster planning as well. Resiliance can be as important as confidence.
Geez, at some point, I would hope that I could trust my child, especially at age 23. And I hope that we had a good enough relationship that he could come to me when things go hopelessly awry. And that he could trust that my reaction would be supportive, and not just angry and punitive.
I know this came up on another thread, but I am not of the mindset that since ‘I’m supporting you economically, therefore I get total control’. At some point you have to let them screw up, face the consequences of it, and be there for them to help them right themselves, and not impose a punishment. The punishment is whatever life delivers as a result of the screw up. I think many parents misunderstand the notion of ‘tough love’. At some point, your role isn’t there to constantly be monitoring so you can head off problems, and then impose a sentence if something happens. That works for very young kids. But sometimes they have to pay the consequences of their own mess. And sometimes that means you, as a parent, makes a sacrifice, too.
If the news stories are accurate, a high school classmate spotted him and told the police. They confronted him. He was found 3 days after he was reported missing. For 3 days his poor parents must have been in agony.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/11/missing-penn-state-student-is-found-safe/
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/crime_courts/article_8f4f26e8-f81f-11e4-9400-3792fcaad81f.html
Again, I am glad he is safe.
<<<
We tell our children the worst thing is to lie to us, but very often our reactions to the truth of their mistakes, shortfalls, and choices we don’t like does not support truth-telling.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
this is very very true. I know that I’ve had to gently-warn some friends of mine to think about that when they react to whatever their kids have done. Once kids realize that “mom’s going to be really mad about this” or “dad’s going to blow his top about that,” it just encourages them to lie.
Human behavior is interesting. It’s amazing how people take the same paths.
A northern VA man, a candidate for a PHD from Howard University just pulled the same thing. When the initial reports were on TV last Tuesday I was betting with myself he took off. His mother dropped him at a carpool meeting site. He’s been located in a campground in MD but refuses to go home. It’s terrible because he’s 33, married, with two young children. I’m sure his family thinks he’s had an emotional breakdown.
I am thrilled that these parents were able to welcome their son home.
I’m sure that the Hollerans (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1774585-very-sad-article-that-parents-should-read-regarding-college-student-depression-p1.html) would not give a fat rat’s behind whether Madison was labeled “master manipulator” or who was paying for rent/police search; rather, they would give everything for one more opportunity to tell their daughter “we don’t care about your academic status” and love you unconditionally.
I hope this family is allowed to heal in private.
About 8 years ago my good friend’s stepdaughter faked her entire graduation from Arizona State. It appears as though the girl’s mother was in on it, and the intent was to deceive the father/stepmother. Everyone attended the graduation and the girl walked (at the large schools, you just hand a piece of paper with your name on it and they call your name). Cap and gown- the whole works. She claimed she didn’t get the diploma because she had to finish up one more paper in a foreign language class during the summer. Graduation party- check!
A couple of months later a medical insurance claim was audited regarding the girl and the insurance company (through the dad’s employer) wanted proof that she was a fulltime student at the time of the medical service. Dad called the school, and they finally told him that his daughter hadn’t been enrolled for 3 years! He had been sending her tuition money every semester, which she was blowing while she worked a part time retail job. The whole thing was just unbelievable, and it ruined many relationships. Arizona State told him it actually wasn’t that uncommon. Even if the parents pay the school directly, if the kid un-enrolls, the refund goes back to the kid!
Who says it went anywhere? Not everyone’s parents pay their tuition, and if he was responsible for it on his own then he certainly didn’t defraud anyone out of money.
Sorry, it just irritates me when people presume that parents are paying for college. Not all can, or will, or need to.
Feelings of shame and failure - failing yourself as well as failing the expectations of others - are intense and debilitating emotions. As Pilot noted above, one needs to look no further than the excellent ESPN article about the Penn track star who committed suicide last year to understand that. To those of you who think you can trust your kids to be entirely open and share anything with you, well… I have friends whose son committed suicide, and they thought that too - NO idea at all that he was struggling. So please don’t judge if you haven’t walked in the shoes of the families whose kids are really struggling to work out who they are and where they fit in this big, wide world, amidst all the pressure to achieve and to follow the expected path. I agree that despite the hurt at being lied to, the family is justified in being elated that he was found safe and sharing unconditional love regardless of his academic status. I would, and actually have, done the same for my kiddo when he took an unexpected life detour that he knew many would consider to be an unwise decision by a bright kid. I hope this family will get their son the counseling or support he needs to put context around his past and future paths.
I am also reminded of a story from many years ago of two high-achieving college students at well-respected schools. The young woman got pregnant, she hid the pregnancy from her friends and family somehow, and then she and the boyfriend killed their newborn in order to avoid the shame of having to tell their parents. People, and especially young adults, will go to great and even extreme lengths to avoid the pain of admitting their perceived failures.
With that in mind, I agree with an earlier post which maintains that it is crucial to not always head off trouble for our kiddos. Let them experience failure and its consequences, all while expressing that your love is not dependent upon their achievements or swayed by mistakes. They need to know that it is okay to mess up and that things will always get better. They cannot ever learn that valuable lesson if the parent is always there to swoop in and either prevent a failure or erase the consequences of a poor decision or honest mistake.
There have been some thoughtful comments in this chain (and some not so thoughtful ones), about our kids and how they will react to bad circumstances. Dealing with a circle of parents, I have seen parents who get upset when they find out their kid has been lying to them about something, tell them “but we have always told you that the most important thing is to tell the truth”, yet the same parents to be blunt, are the type of parent who if the kid does anything wrong, no matter how small, go ballistic on the kids, go over the top. The thing about kids telling the truth is they also have to feel like they can trust their parents, that if a problem happens the parents will be focused on the problem, rather than taking their pound of flesh off the kid. Yelling and screaming might make the parent feel better, but it is the very reason that the kid will lie, to avoid that.
I will also add that even if parents tend to be even tempered and fair, rather than with every transgression threatening to throw the kid out of the house, cut them off, etc, kids have a hard time telling the truth, kids believe it or not have their own sense of honor and most don’t want to disappoint their parents, especially the one parent who usually is 'the grand poobah" of poohbah parents, and it can be very hard to admit failure, even if parents are generally good with dealing with it. We have faced this with our own son, where he was reluctant to talk about some issues he was having, even when we knew something was up, and he always has been able to talk to us.
I am glad the kid is back home, hopefully the parents can help the kid figure out what the problem was and work things out, when a kid does something like this, or the more extreme cases of not attending school for 3 years and such, there is something wrong.
Adults who are not the parents, also need to think before they open their mouths.
This young girl was bullied at school, despite her parents trying to get help for her, and on the day she died, school officials threatened her with failing the 7th grade.
They didn’t have to do that. Schools are supposed to have supports in place.
http://q13fox.com/2015/05/11/family-says-12-year-old-middle-schooler-was-bullied-to-death/
@musicprnt, your comment about their own sense of honor is spot on. It sounds like Madison’s parents were fully supportive of her dropping competitive sports and even leaving Penn, but ultimately it was her own sense of honor that got in the way. I’m sure she felt like she was unable to let down all who had supported her in her achievements - her current coach, her former coaches, her teammates, her high school, and her parents and family who had given so much time and energy to support her as an athlete and a scholar. My own S withheld some critical information from us for a few weeks, and I just couldn’t fathom why he would do that based on his experiences with us as supportive parents who have always provided freedom for our kids to chart their own course. “Sense of Honor” nails it (and him) to a tee. Thank you.
“Even if the parents pay the school directly, if the kid un-enrolls, the refund goes back to the kid!.”
This will not work at my kids’ schools - not for more than one term. The amount of tuition to be paid for the next term does not appear in my authorized payer account if the kid is not registered for the semester or quarter, and skipping a semester without an authorized excuse will not let them register. And the refund is issued to the payer’s address - I got the check when baby kiddo graduated.
BTW, if you give money directly to the kid, it could be treated as a gift for tax purposes. If you pay directly to the school, it does not count towards gifts. So even if the kid is super responsible, it makes sense for tuition money to bypass the kid’s hands.
<<<
Even if the parents pay the school directly, if the kid un-enrolls, the refund goes back to the kid!
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
That depends. If a parent pays with a credit card or debit card, then the refund is supposed to go back to that account.
<<<
Dealing with a circle of parents, I have seen parents who get upset when they find out their kid has been lying to them about something, tell them “but we have always told you that the most important thing is to tell the truth”, yet the same parents to be blunt, are the type of parent who if the kid does anything wrong, no matter how small, go ballistic on the kids, go over the top.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
I totally agree. I stuck by my promise to my kids: If you tell me the truth, there will only be a minor consequence, rather than a big one if you lie about. Even with drinking and driving, the promise was…I will pay for a taxi no matter what, no questions asked. And, yes, one summer I picked up my kid from a party at 3am because they had been playing beer pong and he knew not to drive home.
To think that young adults’ decisions are directly correlated to how they’ve been parented is a bit simplistic, judgmental and in some cases, a tad self-aggrandizing, to say the least.
I can assure you that there are some very exceptional parents whose kids fairly snowballed into tragic circumstances. I’ve come to believe there’s a bit of luck with this whole parenting thing.
The “sense of honor” really resonates with me this week with my son. Despite the ongoing stumbles, his “sense of honor” keeps him from reaching out for help (or makes him feel he’s not entitled to people being who are supportive). Add this to the the aftermath of saving his mom’s life, a Grand Poohbah Parent, and a sib whose trajectory was incredibly easy, and it’s no wonder S is feeling so lost.