<p>Hold the presses! I agree with citygirlsmom. We are in weekly contact with our son – if he were having significant health/financial/academic issues, I think we’d see it. Otherwise, he’s old enough to track his own academic progress. If he screws up, it’s his problem – there’s no more money to just keep putting him through school. I think everyone has the right to make their own mistakes. As a mom, I just hope there’s nothing illegal or life-threatening going on.</p>
<p>Our son actually tells even his homework grades. In college kids don’t share their grades with each other. We all as a family become happy or console.</p>
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<p>Sadly, moms continue to intervene. The WSJ ran a story a few weeks ago about how certain companies, in their efforts to recruit top kids, are actually targetting their parents with information because they know the kids look to parents for help in their job search. YIKES! Are we know CATERING to these helicopter moms.</p>
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<p>Maybe she just resents being monitored. If you have no reason to be concerned, give her some space-- she earned it…</p>
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Why would you find irksome how someone you don’t know chooses to raise their kid who you also don’t know? I don’t know about y’all but I have enough on my plate as it is. </p>
<p>BTW, I don’t have a dog in this fight. D tells me what she wants to tell me and so far it has been more than sufficient. She handles some things on her own but is smart enough to ask for help when she needs it. I personally think that approach is very adult of her. I’m sure it irks somebody that she tells me. So be it. ;)</p>
<p>I ask for help all the time but I don’t think that makes me less responsible or mature. The opposite actually. It’s the immature person who won’t ask for help when they need it and everybody needs it sometime. Well, maybe not some of y’all but us mortals do. ;)</p>
<p>I think the fact that DS has to tell us about his grades leads to more discussion. It’s been an opportunity for us to demonstrate that we understand the challenges he faces in his major – the classes really are hard. I like having the chance to be supportive and encouraging. If I just looked online, it would be a different interaction.</p>
<p>Blucroo - I am with you on this one, I also would like to know !
If you don’t think that D is hiding anything from you , let her know that you would like to have access just for your own, crazy peace of mind. If she says no, respect it. I think that it just boils down to the kind of relationship you have/had with her.</p>
<p>To add a bit more as food for thought:</p>
<p>We always gave our kids enough rope to climb far enough ahead and still be safely tethered to a safety line should they fall.</p>
<p>Along with the decreased supervision came caveats… if you wish to be treated as an adult, you must act like one; if you’re licensed to drive, you’re licensed to kill (yourself and/or others); you drive our vehicles and our under our insurance, it’s our rules with no violations of stated policy under pain of loss of privilege. We would not tolerate any alcohol/drug related violations, vehicular or otherwise.</p>
<p>Pretty straightfoward, and quite clearly stated. </p>
<p>Repeated behavioral mistakes require corrective measures. The subsequent measures are based on your morals, your own upbringing, your financial situation… any number of factors. There’s no harm in letting a child screw up and suffer the consequences. Just be smart enough to know when they can recover on their own. Most people learn from their mistakes and tend not to repeat them, whereas others have a tendency to dig their own holes to fall in to. It’s knowing when to stick your arm in the pit and help pull them out.</p>
<p>There is a real difference between asking for help, and mom and dad checking your email and such all the time, two very different things</p>
<p>For instance, my D just emailed me from school (lunch time)- she herself got an email that for her new job, she needs to take a Red Cross course, and it is filling up fast, and could I register her for it as she does not have a credit card with her, and school doesn’t like that kind of thing done on their computers</p>
<p>She sent me the link, date, all the information, etc…</p>
<p>That is very different from me checking her email etc…</p>
<p>Asking for help is one thing, expecting and counting on your parents to check your own email, etc is something quite different</p>
<p>I am cross referencing the thread from the Forum here. The article from Newseek about “letting go” seems to fit right in here. Take the Heliicopter Parent quiz. I did and am proud to report that I am on honor roll!!! I am doing better than I thought 
Yippee!</p>
<p>oops…forgot the link to the article</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12778684/site/newsweek/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12778684/site/newsweek/</a></p>
<p>The problem w/ letting your kid deal w/ the conseq is that the potential conseq may be so great that parents feel compelled to intervene. </p>
<p>If D/S misses housing deadline, conseq could range from search for other housing (possibly at higher cost and on parent’s dime) to w/d for semester or year and live at home w/ parents to finding a job and living on his/her own (presumably supported by parent until s/he finds job and housing). Since any outcome is likely to implicate the parents, it is unreasonable and unfair to deprive parents of info and ability to intervene early enough to stave off or minimize what will otherwise become the parents’ burden.</p>
<p>true, but the website is open to everyone to look up what the deadlines are, as is grilling your kid (my prefered method.) So, I usually sometime around spring break say, so, looking into housing yet? Registered yet? Whereupon S looks at me through narrowed eyes and basically says, I’ve got it covered, Mom. I sure can’t imagine “momitoring” his email to make sure!</p>
<p>what garland said, if you are worried, go to the website, a neutral place to get 90% of the information a parent might need</p>
<p>And it is called talking to your kid, having a conversation, instead of looking into their stuff</p>
<p>So to make the justification that you need access to their email or whatever so they are not homeless or back a home doesn’t really fly</p>
<p>I am not saying you don’t ask your student questions, ask about what checks they might need, what they think their living situtation is going to be- off campus or whatever-, but if you can’t ask your kid these questions, or give gentle reminders and feel the need to monitor all they do, they are not ready for college, and neither are you</p>
<p>“If D/S misses housing deadline, conseq could range from search for other housing (possibly at higher cost and on parent’s dime) to w/d for semester or year and live at home w/ parents to finding a job and living on his/her own (presumably supported by parent until s/he finds job and housing)”</p>
<p>True, and wise parents would let the D/S handle the consequences of their own disorganization. That means that if the D/S had to obtain housing at higher costs, the D/S would be expected to pay for those higher costs by working or taking out loans. If that wasn’t possible, then the D/S would have to take time off.</p>
<p>At some point, the D/S will have to take the responsibility of organizing their own lives, and college is the best time to start because then most are not also having to be responsible for supporting a partner and kids.</p>
<p>Actually all 3 of my kids’ schools mailed grades home. However, all the kids told us their grades before they were ever mailed out. All my kids were different regarding “privacy”–one tells me probably more than I need to know, one told just enough to satisfy, and one tells on an as needed basis. Two of mine just gave me their sign-in passwords, which I rarely used --mostly just to check on bills and to make sure checks were credited.</p>
<p>As far as health privacy issues–all the student health clinics mine were involved with required a release for each separate visit or incident. One blanket release did not give a parent privilege to past or future information.</p>
<p>If all is going well, then yes, there is no reason for a parent to check grades, etc. But I remember reading threads about kids who flunk out due to depression or other mental illness and the parents had no clue. And part of the symptomology of many of these problems is an inability to continue normal communications. That’s the scenario I’m scared of. If suddenly my d becomes less communicative, and I don’t have the waiver, there’s nothing I can do to find out what’s going on. Just like health care proxies, I look at these waivers as “to be opened in event of emergency”, not for every day “snooping.”</p>
<p>I think that if you sense a change in your son or daughter, there are a variety of methods for finding out what’s going on. You can talk to your kid, talk to your kids roommate, talk to the RA, talk to a Dean. Worst case, go visit, as some parents have done. It’s just the methods that are different. It’s like reading their mail, vs having them tell you what Grandma said in her letter.</p>
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<p>Realize that without a release, neither the RA nor the Dean can talk to you. And there is the problem. I don’t have to read the mail to find out what Grandma said; I can ask Grandma. In these sorts of situations, you can’t ask the Dean. And if your kid is far away, visiting isn’t always feasible (and at any rate, that’s a short snapshot that doesn’t necessarily show you the truth.)</p>
<p>I don’t want to have to rely on a roommate to tell me what’s going on.</p>
<p>But, stuff can be going on when they’re in grad school; stuff can be going on when they’re in the working world; stuff can be going on when they get married, when they have kids, etc etc. Absent signs that there is a real issue, like mental illness, do we really need the default to be: I get to see everything about you, just in case?</p>