Parents of College Freshmen and Kindergartners Should Trade Places for a Day

Parent Cafe
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<p>Thought this might give you a chuckle:</p>

<p>College Freshmen, Kindergartners’ Parents Should Trade Places</p>

<p>By KATHLEEN O’BRIEN
c.2007 Newhouse News Service</p>

<p>Here is a modest proposal for the new school year:</p>

<p>Parents of kindergartners and college kids should switch places. The college parents could see the little ones off to kindergarten, and the kindergarten parents could help the college kids move onto campus.</p>

<p>As it stands, we see neurotic young parents wringing their hands in the elementary school parking lot, worried to near-death about all that Might Go Wrong. Meanwhile, on campus, exhausted older parents try to wrestle a $400 "microfridge’’ up four flights of dorm stairs.</p>

<p>Wouldn’t a switch help both sets of 'rents?</p>

<p>The veteran parents could oversee the kindergarten hand-off with a relaxed joy. They’d have fond memories of those years, back when the most complicated challenge facing their children was remembering not to eat paste.</p>

<p>They’d know that it will all be fine: The bus will be on time, mostly; the teachers will be nice, mostly. The kids will either eat the snack the parents packed, or they won’t, but either way, it won’t matter much. They’d beam with knowledge that at this stage, they can still help with homework.</p>

<p>While there will be struggles ahead — bullies, math fairs, cursive penmanship — they will be surmounted. There will be cute artwork on the fridge, a class photo in which everyone is clean and neat, and if they’re lucky, a ceramic pencil-holder.</p>

<p>New parents don’t know this. They only know they are depositing their children at a large, institutional building run by busy strangers wielding clipboards. They are uncertain whether all their lessons about eating, sneezing, peeing and picking one’s nose have really sunk in. They worry most of all that the child might not be cute/tall/smart enough.</p>

<p>Soon enough the other kids will become nice friends or incipient demons, and no one — including the adults — knows yet which will be which.</p>

<p>The older parents know everyone will figure that out pretty quickly, and while there will be tears, the child will acquire some wisdom along the way. That makes them perfect for this task.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, the new parents could head off to college to drop off the older kids.</p>

<p>These new parents are young. They’re fit. They don’t mind climbing those dorm stairs carrying a printer, an ergonomic chair, two pillows and a 12-pack of Ramen noodles. They don’t even look for the freight elevator.</p>

<p>They still have an aura of cool about them. They wouldn’t do dorky things like insist the kid bring an old telephone to plug into the wall. Land line? Who uses a land line anymore?</p>

<p>Having emerged from college fairly recently themselves, they wouldn’t be agog over or appalled by coed bathrooms, soy milk in the cafeteria, or the price of textbooks. They’d remember how to convert a dorm bed into a loft. They wouldn’t start every other sentence with "When I went to college … ‘’</p>

<p>Furthermore, these new parents still have the glow of enthusiasm about them. (Why, when they go to back-to-school night, they even attempt to sit in those little tiny chairs!) And since they wouldn’t be paying the tuition bill, they could approach the college move-in day with unfettered optimism.</p>

<p>Yep, trading worries for a day: Win-win.</p>

<p>(Kathleen O’Brien is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. She can be contacted at kobrien(at)starledger.com.)</p>

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<p>^I read that when she first published it a couple months ago–I liked it a lot!</p>

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<p>Good idea. But consider that one person might be playing both roles at the same time. (I’ll miss the opportunity twice–my oldest son started college the year BEFORE his sister started kindergarten–and his youngest sister won’t start kindergarten until after he graduates in 2010, a year AFTER I send my 2nd kid to college).<br>
So, now I’m wondering if we’re the neurotic YOUNG parents of a college student or the exhausted OLD parents of a kindergartener–usually mistaken for the grandparents. . .</p>

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<p>Atomom - Hats off to you! Good Lord!!</p>

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<p>That article was great. I totally recognized myself in some of those scenarios, especially the phone/answering machine combo that we plugged in for DD last year when she was a freshman. I thought it might come in handy because “when I went to college” we didn’t have cell phones and we called each other on our room phones. This year, the phone/answering machine combo was sold in a garage sale. Apparently the landline hone rang only twice last year … both times it was me calling.</p>

<p>Oh my, atomom, I’m tired just thinking about your situation. You’re a better woman than I!</p>

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<p>Not comforting. When I read this, I started remembering all the things that went wrong in kindergarten. The bus that did NOT have my son on it; the substitute teacher insisted he get on the wrong bus, and he got home several hours late after the driver of the wrong bus realized he had an extra kid. Or the day he did get off the bus on time, but was swollen up to twice his normal size and was beet red, because the school had gone on a surprise field trip to a petting farm and a hay ride, evidently unaware of his serious allergies to rabbits and hay. I could go on, but the memories do not put me at ease.</p>

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<p>midmo – lol – well, not really LAUGHING, but you know… sympathizing with a smile as I wonder not so much how on earth your little guy survived, but how you YOURSELF did…</p>

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<p>This certainly brought a smile to my face… and I still have a year to go before my oldest starts college. I don’t miss the anxiety of the kindergarten bus or when on the 2nd day of school when the bus coming to pick up my 3rd grader and brand new kindergartner - literally - caught fire at the stop just before ours. Kids were late that day!</p>

<p>For my college days, I go back even BEFORE phones in the room. I was in a sorority and there was ONE phone on each floor (yep, three total in the house) and then the main one in a little cubby room and we rotated who was on phone duty every evening. There was an intercom system and the person would make announcements to each floor “Suzy Q., phone call on line one” etc. If you had boys calling you, watch out… sometimes the person would get cute about it and the entire house soon knew who had called for you. :-)</p>

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<p>Great column! These are some of the same reasons we can be so relaxed with our grandchildren.</p>

<p>We get too soon old and too late smart, as someone once said. And moving your child in on a hot August day is DEFINITELY for younger people than DH and me.</p>