<p>RM - rating your MIL a 1 instead of negative, that was a nice gesture :)</p>
<p>historymom - welcome back! how are the twins (who I will forever fondly remember as I first read their names: Twink and Twine ;))</p>
<p>NM - hope all goes well. you will come back to welcoming and supportive arms here.</p>
<p>boysx3 - the view from your cloud made me smile. I hope you enjoy the rest of your visit.</p>
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Modadunn - that could apply to SO many of my issues!</p>
<p>NM – all best wishes for a surgery in which they have to do less and a recovery that goes better than estimated!</p>
<p>Next summer I’ll find out what it means to be a MIL, as our older D is getting married. We like the young man well enough (especially proud now that he has landed a great job in this economy), but he is one of the most introverted, socially diffident people I know. I hope hope hope to be a good MIL, but he doesn’t make it exactly easy.</p>
<p>PRJ Twink and Twine are just fine. E found out today that she gets a jersey for their upcoming club soccer game vs UCB so she is thrilled. 18 jersies, 30+ girls. She reports good scores on assignments and though her roomie wants lights out at 9:00 pm they are otherwise in synch and getting along well.</p>
<p>K is having big fun not sharing too much on the grade front…don’t know if she hasn’t received any or if she just doesn’t think to share. I did ask about a week ago but as yet she only had one graded assignment. A chem test where she was above the average but below where she hoped to have been.</p>
<p>Both seem to be adjusting well!</p>
<p>zetesis I am sure you will be a grand MIL. Good luck bringing out his more gregarious side!</p>
<p>Son called this afternoon… no pre-text or email to encourage it AND he wasn’t asking for anything (that I picked up on anyway)! It’s a landmark day around here.</p>
<p>Has midterms week after next apparently and so is gearing up for those. Told me he laid out all his assignments and papers and so worked really hard on getting his paper that is due to an almost done stage. Seriously, this kind of time management is just so beyond my MO it’s absurd. Hugely happy he is doing all that he can to do well, seems to still love his classes, has a cold and says he is almost out of dayquill. hmm… so I guess he DID ask me for something. But seems he could get that for himself though at the campus’ little 7/11 kind of place. The prices weren’t out of range of walgreens (I checked while we were there). Anyway… That’s all the good news except he says he is forced to wearing a hat because he needs a haircut so badly. When I suggested he get it cut at the barber’s in town he said everyone has warned him to wait until thanskgiving. This is a kid, however, who basically has short hair - not buzzed, but not terribly complicated either. Oh well… I think he might have been hinting to bring him some other hats too. So maybe he WAS calling cuz he wanted something. Oh well, it was still great to talk to him for longer than five minutes.</p>
<p>^^Modadunn- Nice to see you again!
I always thought it sounded like you had a great son; now I see it’s clearly true, because I haven’t a solid conversation like that yet with mine!<br>
I’m liking the kmccrindle approach about the shareholder/investor. Might have to borrow that for a little persuasion.</p>
<p>do you ever hear from you kids that a certain classmate is not doing well as in partying to much and what do you do about it? I f anything particualrly if you dont really know tha parent?</p>
<p>Yes this happened the other day but it is a very close of my D’s f rom HS who is at another college. I don’t know what to do. These kids were such straight arrows that I’m also thinking that the scale of what’s really going on may not be that bad. It makes me ill to think of it…</p>
<p>I too have been heard something about a classmate (friend) of D’s and hard partying. She does not attend same school as D so what I heard (from only one person, by the way) has been third or fourth hand. So at this point, I am not saying anything.</p>
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<p>Woody, same here. Another reason I am not saying anything at this time.</p>
<p>My D is in Boston, her BF in Chicago. My D mentioned that BF is miserable - doesn’t get along with roommate, not making friends, not fitting in. I haven’t talked to her parents, but I did mention it to some other parents who have been sending her notes, etc. to try to cheer her up.</p>
<p>I know my D says the classmate parties hard but is not in the same major so she does not know how he is doing in school. Just a lot of money to waste. But I suppose I do not have the real facts so I cant elaborate. She did say one thing that has raised more alarm than the usual “party thing” that makes me feel it is more extreme. But i will keep asking
but right now do not have enough facts as they are friends but do not travel in the same circles. I just would want to know if my D partiedin extreme, I’d be foolish to think she wont do it at all.</p>
<p>In my post, by BF I mean best friend - not boy friend - still trying to get the hang of these abbreviations!</p>
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<p>My very first weekend at college I was going laundry on a Friday night. Two boys came into the laundry room and picked me and another girl up, got us fake IDs and took us out. I had seven beers (and I think I weighed all of 95 lbs). </p>
<p>If someone had been observing me that night, they would have been quite concerned about my partying. Turned out it was the first and last time I did anything like that…I actually hate beer…those seven beers I drank that night were seriously the only beers I’ve had in my life. </p>
<p>So maybe some of the kids are trying out the party lifestyle and it will be as short-lived as my one night of partying.</p>
<p>I hear ya College_Query!</p>
<p>When it comes to the partying of other kids, I think defining the fulcrum might be necessary. Would it depend on the party savvy/experience of the kid talking about it? What I mean to say is that if MY son was concerned someone was partying way too much, it would be a huge red flag that the kid was definitely partying way too much. He has said there are some kids he’s met that probably never drank before. And I also know that he has been protector and care-taker of a friend or two - mostly the girls. Not sure I would pass the info onto the parents unless I knew them fairly well personally. But I think that depends on knowing how they might react too. Like, if they had expectations that their kid was not going to party at all, they very well might over-react. On the other side of that teeter-totter, I also know parents who don’t react at all. Frankly, I don’t know what’s worse.</p>
<p>My point as well, Missy.</p>
<p>One of his friends had a rough night. She learned a lesson. I seriously doubt it will happen again and so I see no reason to give her mom a heads up (as she wouldn’t overreact, but instead over-worry). He wasn’t with her with she had been drinking but ran into her later and then made sure she got home and stayed until he was sure she was OK. Like you Missy, she weighs all of 100 pounds soaking wet.</p>
<p>Sounds like you have a great son, Modadunn. </p>
<p>I’ve told my kids that when they get to college (hopefully not before), they are going to have one night when they have too much to drink. [I didn’t tell them about my experience freshman year of waking up hung over with a girl in my super-narrow bed with no recollection how she got there or what if anything happened, which made future encounters in the dining hall a bit awkward]. But, I told them, the mark of intelligence is learning from that night. You feel bad, you get sick, whatever. Remember that and keep the drinking under control thereafter.</p>
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<p>Ain’t it the truth…late 70s dining hall food while hung over…</p>
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I had that night too. It wasn’t that the senior boy who took me out “got me drunk”. It was just that I didn’t know my own tolerance and I had another beer every time he did. Learned my lesson quick.</p>
<p>Funny story: the next morning a couple of concerned sophomore boys stopped by to make sure I was okay and to caution me about “the company I was keeping.” Fast forward ten years . . . . I married that senior boy. Turned out he wasn’t such a bad influence after all ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for the kudos on son, and I am cautiously optimistic, but also know that there is a lot of “there but for the grace of God go I” in there as well.</p>
<p>My concerns about college drinking (and I agree that it is best if it all waits until then, but I have to admit there was some pushing of the envelope this summer albeit in a “responsible” way of breaking the law - talk about dubious distinctions!) is that of binge drinking of hard liquor and the whole pre-gaming thing. Mostly I think the kids where my son is are drinking cheap beer that will likely fill you up and make you a frequent guest to the bathroom before making you toxically impaired. But I also agree that those kids that think “everyone” is drinking to extremes are the ones drinking to the extreme and are actually in a minority. The majority are having that one or so bad nights learning that, “Oh OK… this is when I need to stop.” It’s kind of all part of the experience and if they had some middle ground (vs 21 drinking age), there would be a lot less hiding it and a lot more conversations about drinking. Think about it… most kids are graduating college around 21… the learning curve is past and they’ve spent about four years hiding their drinking behind closed doors. Not good in my opinion.</p>
<p>PRJ - I LOVED that story!!</p>
<p>I completely agree with you on the drinking age. When it was 18 many of us arrived at college having begun to learn how to drink responsibly (for the most part) while living in our parent’s homes. We already knew something about tolerance and limits, we had already started up that learning curve. Kids who drink in secret, for whom it is forbidden, for so many years are, IMHO, much more likely to push the limits and abuse alcohol. We talked and talked to D about binge drinking - I just hope she was listening. I really hope she is part of that majority you talk about.</p>
<p>eek
recalling my own past mistakes has me worrying all over again LOL</p>