<p>:D Jamimom, I don’t know how long it will take for her to get the bank account open, but it took 3 trips for DH, DD and I to get her set up with her learner’s permit - the DMV believes in LOOONNNNGGG lunches, and does not buy into the idea of easily readable signs listing requirements for a license.</p>
<p>I think the special deals that are available for college students when they first go to college make it very easy to open up an account for them. It is not that easy to just walk in and do it here, though I must say that they were missing some pretty basic stuff a few times. They figured that if they had the check, the bank would accept it with minimum red tap and open the account. They were rather disgrunteled about the entire thing.</p>
<p>I was a bit surprised at how easy it was for my son to register to vote (don’t even know if he was legal to do so as he was still registered here) during the last elections. I had read about the obstacles in people registering to vote, but I do feel that it was a bit crazy that he could register so easily when he still had his driver’s license from here and really little in the way of proof of residency. Knowing him, he brought little with him to place him in that state, and he could have turned around and voted here as well.</p>
<p>I have to ask, isn’t this less about the impulse and everything about giving into to it? I’ve had to stop myself from trying to help - interfer - with my son’s college quest a number of times. I admit to be more successful at some times than others. </p>
<p>I want to help all my children to get what they want. I want them to stand on their own two feet. The problem is balancing the two.</p>
<p>My youngest had this to say when asked about his brother going off to college: “The worst part is now there won’t be anyone to deflect some of the parenting.”</p>
<p>Those of you with high school age children may not all be aware that once they turn 18, you will not be able to discuss even their most non-personal medical issues with health professionals. My niece who was away at college in another state asked her mom to ask her eye doctor at home about a problem she had been having with her contact lenses and her mom was given a hassle over the HIPA privacy provisions. When my son was in a very hot city in Europe two summers ago (well over 105 degrees for days on end), during the awful heat wave, he was having chest pains that concerned him so much that he called us about it (but wouldn’t go to a doctor there or anything, of course.) When I called the pediatrician’s office where he had been a patient since age 5, they told me they couldn’t discuss it with me since he was 18 years old. They take this HIPA stuff VERY seriously.</p>
<p>You can get your kids to sign off on the medical confidentiality thing which can make life alot easier. We ran into this when I was getting pharmacy records for end of year health plan accounting. Though I was the one who made the appointments for S1, took him to the doctors, brought in the prescription, picked up the prescription and paid for the healthplan, doctors and prescription, I was not entitled to the info. He was in high school then, so it was no big deal to get the statement and signature, just meant a second trip to the pharmacy and a day’s delay, but annoying.</p>
<p>But we had a serious problem this year. S had been suffering pains for a while and did not bother to tell us about them. He had gone to the student health center and they just sloughed him off. He had an enlarged kidney that was on the point of bursting, but was easily fixed surgically. It was truly an accident this was discovered, and I am still angry at the college health center, at him and his coach for not apprising us of the situation as he could have lost the kidney.</p>
<p>
even when it affects your younger children</p>
<p>My husband is on meds and I found a note in my daughters recycling ( which she had stuck in the garbage) that she was going to kill herself and that she had some of her dads meds. He takes it sporadically and I couldnt tell when it was last refilled and pharmacist would not even tell me that so I would know how much she potentially could have. ( he was @ work) I suspect that possibly I could have gotten the pharmacist that we know rather well to tell me, but of course he wasn’t there.
Big stress, the pharmacist just told me to take her to the emergency room, but as as far as I could tell she hadn’t even taken anyyet and for someone who already has a great deal of anxiety I couldn’t see the plus side of the emergency room.</p>
<p>Strick – Things got a lot easier last Spring when we simply admitted that we’re bad parents. We just came to the conclusion that we really suck at it, or at least, we suck at conforming to an ideal of parenting that drives everybody crazy. We’ve been known to yell at our 16 y/o (just ask our neighbors); we’re inconsistent most of the time; and, we watch too much crap on TV, so why aren’t both of our kids criminals? Beats me, we sure have done some stupid things along the way. But, by some miracle, they seem to be turning out okay, despite our best efforts to be bad parents.</p>
<p>As a Christmas present the week before finals, I helped our college soph dd clean the apartment she shares with her 3 roommates. I left extra supplies because they tend to run out, then nobody has time to shop, and the apt doesn’t get cleaned for months. What took me a couple of hours would have taken them all week. I’d never seen four more genuinely grateful college students. I thought one of them was actually going to cry! ;o)</p>
<p>So, I dunno. Overparenting, not parenting enough…I saw a mom yesterday <em>helping</em> her 4 y/o choose balloons for her preschool friends. After the little girl went through every balloon on display, including the black, “Over The Hill” balloon and the gold “Happy 50th Anniversary” balloon, she picked 3 mylar, Christmas balloons. Then, her mother led her through every ribbon color on display, and after each choice, the mom asked her daughter, “Now, does that make you happy?” At the end when every customer in line was getting ready to put plastic bags over our heads and end our suffering, the mom asked, “Now, are you sure that makes you happy?” The little girl just shook her head as if to say, “Mom, I don’t know what the f— you want from me! Just get me a balloon!”</p>
<p>There was a parenting forum at the kids’ school the other day, and the psychologist just flat out said,“There are lots of bad parents out there and the kids turn out fine, and there are fine parents whose kids just turn out terribly”…not exactly a hopeful remark, but realistic, I suppose…Platitude, but we all just try to do the best we can.</p>
<p>Sluggbug - I got a good chuckle out of your post! I’m probably a “bad” parent too. I let my child stay up too late, eat too much junk food, and I definitely do things for him that he should do for himself. Nonetheless, he’s turning out great!</p>
<p>I know exactly how that little girl felt with the balloons. My kid is the kind who would really prefer not to clutter up his life with too many options about things he doesn’t really care about that much. From the time he was really small he’s been like the busy executive who wants their administrative assistant (that’s me) to handle all the “details”. He wants me to do things and make decisions that other kids would never in a million years relinquish to their mom, and that I would have never relinquished to my own mom. They are who they are in spite of us.</p>
<p>texas137:
I can relate, my current senior is happy to have me type in all the facts on those online apps and handle lots of details (don’t flame me, she writes all her own essays, I just type in the fact stuff! it’s a time saver)…I am not an executive asst, I am the athlete’s manager!</p>
<p>My current university daughter never showed me a single app, did every single thing herself, no sharing…they are who they are, but the 2nd kid is more fun in the university process and is going to have better options next spring due to the team research effort. There is no way she could do all she is doing and research the schools, too.</p>
<p>Over30:
</p>
<p>LOL! I’m sure D would have liked someone around to deflect parenting on some days.</p>
<p>Sluggbugg!!! Good to see your phosphors. Hope all is well with you.</p>
<p>Somemom: for a very busy student, some form of of teamwork just makes sense. My D wrote out all her apps longhand…I entered them on-line as each was completed. If she had Q’s, I’d run down the A’s. Since she was routinely up until 12:30 or 1:00 doing homework and up at 6:00am, it seemed like no problem. </p>
<p>Of course, running down the A’s is how I wound up here on CC and one A led to another Q and the next thing you know…</p>
<p>Well, my husband thinks I’m overprotective, and I think he’s too careless. I think we come out about even. I was NOT thrilled when he paid for motorcycle lessons for the three of them–so now my DH, DD, and DS all have legal permission from the state to ride motorcycles. He did also get them really good leathers and helmets, but… let’s leave it at: we fought about it for days!</p>
<p>IMHO, it’s the single parents who are most like to hover–and I think it’s because a good parenting team does provide a checks-and-balances-system for carelessness or overprotectiveness…</p>
<p>I’d be careful with those generalizations. I really don’t think single parents are any more likely to fall into one category or another. Our daughter, for example, avoids any such trouble by using us and her sisters as fallbacks. If she isn’t confident about a particular problem–most recently, getting her third-grader to do her homework in a timely and efficient fashion–she comes to us for help. She’s sharp enough to know one person can’t handle everything alone and plenty loving not to want to take the risk. I think lots of single parents take advantage of resources that way.</p>
<p>Sluggbugg, wow, great to see you back on CC! Your post regarding the balloons cracked me up. </p>
<p>Over30, the comment your youngest child made about the older one going off to college and now nobody left to “deflect the parenting”…my younger one would concur. She wrote an entire personal essay regarding her older sister leaving for college and the affect on her…it did NOT center on the parenting issue at all but I recall one phrase in it about the things in her childhood with her sister that she cannot do being apart and it included “laughing at our parents”. ;-)</p>
<p>Single parent here, I don’t think that I hover any more or any less than any other parent. I will be the first to tell you that it literally took a village to raise my child. I am grateful that she has the support of my 9 siblings and her father’s 6 siblings , Godparents, Grandparents, and best friends who she can go to for comic relief, to get vent off or just to hear a different perspective. </p>
<p>I had to laugh at the analogy of swallowing the coin kid 1- doctor, kid 2- wait for it to pass, kid- deduct it from allowance because I have a sister who parents just like that.</p>
<p>My sister thinks that I am over protective, but only because if in no other part of my life I am a very organized parent. I still thinks that she holds it against me that I use to write these 3 page memos if I had to travel on business and D stayed with her.</p>
<p>Sybbie, if it makes ya feel any better, when we left our children with a sitter, or even when we took a week’s vacation and left them with grandparents, we wrote out extensive memos of everything too!</p>
<p>At least no memos of this variety accompanied them to college, LOL.</p>
<p>Nice to hear from you, Thedad & Soozie! I bopped back to CC after all of the big changes. Things look pretty good. I was lost in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) land this November. My phosphors, Thedad, were everywhere! Then, I started ordering all of the Sex in the City episodes from Netflix…</p>
<p>I lean more to the over- than the under-parenting profile, probably because my own hippie parents were so laissez faire that I sometimes felt very unnoticed and untended. However, their ‘underparenting’ made me very responsible and self sufficient.</p>
<p>When I went off to college (sight unseen; never even visited) my parents dropped me off at the San Francisco airport with three or four large bags. I flew to Boston, where a friend of mine (someone I knew from summer camp) picked me up at the airport in his rattle-trap VW bug, drove me an hour to Providence, and dropped me off at my dorm. (He did help me carry everything up 3 flights, then hugged me and took off.)</p>
<p>It was a great way to go to college; bonus was no embarrassing “first impressions” due to sobbing or bossy (or hippie) parents!</p>
<p>dmd77, my husband and I complement each other well too. He’s the “they’ll be fine, it’ll all work out” type and I’m sort of “chicken little.” I will say once they got out of toddlerhood I eased up a little, and now I’m much better, thank you very much. Husband kept me from driving myself and our kids nuts, and I got him a little more involved.</p>