Parenting Secrets of a College Professor

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I enjoyed reading this article. I mostly agree with her and yet at the same time, I imagine it might be a whole lot easier to be this hands off mom when she knows her kids are on her campus (even if she doesn’t see them she knows she can if she really wanted to). </p>

<p>I have sympathy for parents that find this too hard to do and not sure how I will be, but I do think it’s how it should be. And my heart breaks for that mom who sits for hours looking at the college cam for her son. That seems beyond helicoptering to something that needs professional help. </p>

<p>[Parenting</a> secrets of a college professor - Parenting - Salon.com](<a href=“http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/parenting_secrets_of_a_college_professor/]Parenting”>http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/parenting_secrets_of_a_college_professor/)</p>

2

<p>My kid lives 2000 miles away from me. She should try that before writing any more “advice” for parents of college students.</p>

<p>Some of what she is said is sound and I agree but it does grate that her children are on the same campus yet she feels qualified to judge those who have taken the far greater leap of faith of truly sending their children out into an unknown world.</p>

3

<p>^ Mine will be about 3000 miles (bus and flight or 2 flights) but <em>could be</em> on my campus instead but feels it’s too close to home. Sigh.</p>

4

<p>We’ve listened to some interesting questions from parents at various campus visit days/orientations, etc. It does make you wonder how the parents will function when their kids are at school. We told our kids that we will not call, text or email them for the first 2 weeks of school. They are free to call, email or text us anytime though. We wanted them to adjust to school and not fall back on us to fill down time. We also told them they had to stay on campus for the first 6 weeks before they could come home. If they were really having problems we would have gone to them, etc. We have always felt that the number one thing kids learn in college is how to transition from being a high school kid to an adult and if parents are in constant contact with their kids, it’s just too easy to say “mom, what should I do about…” vs trying to figure it out on their own first, then asking for help if need be. It’s worked out pretty well so far.</p>

5

<p>I agree, with the comment about her kids are her campus – I checked and it appears that her school does participated in a tuition exchange with a large number of schools. Even if there was some rule that for some reason her kids had to go to her school, that her kids are at her school, imvho, disqualifies her from giving advice lke this.</p>

6

<p>At the school our oldest attended, the college president said his 2 daughters attended the school and he rarely saw them. They lived in the dorms, he wasn’t Facebook friends with them on purpose, only called them on weekends, etc. He made an effort to pretend they were not there so they could live the college life. My guess is that the author of that article does something similar.</p>

<p>Heck, I can go a couple days without seeing the kids that live here still if they are busy with after school things, get home late, etc.</p>

7

<p>I think the article is spot on. She is seeing the results of parental hovering first-hand, and definitely has the qualifications for writing this kind of article. I really don’t think it matters if your kid is 30 miles away or 3000 miles away, college is a perfect time for our kids to learn to direct their own lives, not have mom or dad call three times a day to check in.
Having been on this forum for years, I think most CC parents would agree with the author. We may come here to get help launching our kids, but we stay to find support while letting them go.</p>

8

<p>My D is only a couple of hundred miles away, but that’s still not local. She is now a sophomore and she said something that amused me yesterday. We’ve been having a bit of difficulty on the home front lately and she is aware of it. She called me yesterday and I was pretty down and she cheered me up. I told her how glad I was that she called and she asked why I hadn’t called her. I told her that I believe in letting her take the lead on that so that I’m not intruding. She told me that by the second half of sophomore year, she has her feet under her and I can treat her like a real person again! There are things I help her with, but we don’t hover. We do, however, text often, silly things from both ends. I almost wish I had saved my texts all this time so I could put them into a book form for her.</p>

9

<p>

This is the God’s honest truth.</p>

10

<p>I do not think that it is fair to judge what how other parents relate to their children. She does not necessarily know the parents, the students and their family well enough in the first place. </p>

<p>I won’t rationalize her points. I will just say that I could make a judgement about her by saying that she is coddling her child by sending her to the school she works at nearly every day. I could compare myself to her by saying, “Jeez, I let my sons grow up by sending them to another area of the country for college, and she is limiting her children by sending them to college in her/their own backyard.” BTW, I don’t think that the judgements I just made are fair either.</p>

11

<p>Looking back, I can’t believe the huge leap of faith I took sending my kids to boarding school. I won’t go into the whole backstory, but different reasons for each kid. When my daughter (Rice '07) went away as a high school junior, kids didn’t even have cellphones yet, and they didn’t work well in the woods of Michigan where she went to school anyway. You are completely trusting the school to take care of medical issues, social issues etc., with limited phone calls and emails with your kid. It worked out fine and was a magical experience for our daughter, but looking back I’m wondering how I did it. When our son went away he wasn’t even 15 but he was only 3 hours away at the first school. College was a piece of cake!</p>

12

<p>I agree with the anti-hovering premise of the article, but take the author’s self-congratulation with many grains of salt. She seems to go in for over-exposure of her family dynamics. Last year in the NY Times:
[Teaching</a> Teenagers About the Joy of Sex - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/teaching-teenagers-about-the-joy-of-sex/]Teaching”>Teaching Teenagers About the Joy of Sex - The New York Times)</p>

13

<p>I think just being on same campus as kids would give a lot of parents more confidence – that if something were wrong, they would know it. I think the the professor writing the article was arrogant and unfeeling toward parents not n her shoes.</p>

14

<p>She should write an article when her kids have actually left home. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>I never called my daughter her freshman year, but she called several times a day.</p>

<p>Last year, I still didn’t call, she called once a day.</p>

<p>Now, I call her, she calls me, whichever. We don’t talk each day, but a few times a week, for sure. A lot of the space came from her being abroad for 4 months and only being able to skype at odd hours. </p>

<p>Why is this even up for debate. She is my daughter. Just because somebody arbitrarily picked 13th grade as the year to leave home doesn’t mean she didn’t want to check in on things as she was figuring out how to manage life an airplane ride from home.</p>

<p>But, yeah, put your kid on the campus you teach on, with professors who know who she is, and then give yourself a pat on the back for “letting her go” and scoff at others who call? She needs a reality check.</p>

15

<p>yeah, Poet, I’m waiting for her next article entitled, “College is affordable, I dont know why other parents are complaining.”</p>

16

<p>I thought the author seemed a little too smug and critical of other parents. I feel we do best when we are honest with each other but a bit more supportive.</p>

<p>I’m sure professors see some of the most extreme examples of helicoptering that we could all agree are over the top. But most of us are just doing the best we can and trying to find some reasonable balance. We love our children.</p>

<p>I guess being supportive and reasonable doesn’t get your article published.</p>

17

<p>I couldn’t agree more Skyhook. I am offended by the author’s judgmental and self-superior tone. And, her exaggerations are offensive and make me question the veracity of her over the top stories too. She says: “The vast majority of my students talk to their parents three times a day or more.” Really? The “vast majority”? And, just how does she know that? I think it would be a rare student/parent who need that level of contact three times a day. I don’t know anyone among all of my friends and my three young adult daughters’ friends who need anywhere close to this level of contact. But even if they did, how about trying a little more compassion and a little less judgment?</p>

18

<p>My kids commute from home to college. Even I don’t speak with them 3 times a day and I live with them! I think the author knows 2 students who sometimes talk to their parents 3 times a day and she extrapolated from that.</p>

19

<p>The prof/author wrote " In Allison’s senior year of high school, parents rolled their eyes over filling out their sons’ and daughters’ college applications, expecting commiseration from me. I smiled and nodded and hoped my face didn’t show the absolute incredulity I felt. Didn’t they see the disservice they were doing their children?"</p>

<p>Now I certainly didn’t help my kids fill out applications, but did support their staying on top of the process. But in her case, her daughters were going to Drexel where she taught, duh, of course she could relax about applications.</p>

<p>and then this;
“The other night I was wondering about the whereabouts of my own college freshman and willing myself not to text her. I picked up my phone when I heard a buzz, and lo, Hayley had checked into a restaurant on 4Square. Phew. But I am doing my best to maintain balance.”</p>

<p>if your kids are away at college, as my two are, we have no idea where they are on a regular basis…to the extent that we’d never be able to even say, where is s/he? We have adapted to letting them go…they are living their lives and we rarely know exactly where they are at a given moment…plus, I’m pretty sure she’s admitting to having her phone alert her to a 4Square update about her daughter??? doesn’t that in and of itself kind of undo her whole theory?</p>

<p>and then this; "Just because you can see that your child has not swiped in at the Dining Center but instead bought $12 worth of snacks at the campus bodega, do you need to know that information? "</p>

<p>okay, she’s kidding isn’t she. none of us have this ability to micromanage on this level anyway, nor would most of us really care about such minutia. Frankly her admission to check this is a glimpse into how much information she probably DOES have access to simply because her kids are on her campus, as another poster mentioned, other profs see them, know who they are…they are certainly insulated by this very fact. </p>

<p>I teach at a private LAC, and frankly many of the students I see have distant, problematic relationships with their parents, with limited support. I know of no students who report 3x a day contact with their parents. </p>

<p>I’m happy to say my junior d and senior s both choose to call to share happy news, ie. internships, job interviews, and also difficult moments, ie. feeling overwhelmed with exams, or a breakup with a gf/bf. We enjoy our college visits, and their time back home for holidays etc. Overall I’m very happy with my kids’ launching process, and my ability to respect their choices, and support their autonomy. I think she could learn a lot from us!</p>

20

<p>This woman has her kids on HER OWN campus. She follows them on twitter, and apparently they tweet their every movement for her to see. They text at least every three days. </p>

<p>And she prides herself on how she is letting go, vs other parents?</p>

<p>What a fool.</p>

<p>I don’t hear from my son three times a MONTH, much less every three days. I very much doubt thather assumptions about how often the majority of students on her campus communicate with their parents have ANY basis in reality.</p>