<p>This is not backing off. Backing off is NOT TALKING ABOUT IT ANY MORE. It is isn’t telling the kid it is fine to get a referral for counseling (boy, would that piss me off if I were this kid!). It is calling less often, and when you do call do not talk about classes or grades. Ask what he is doing that is interesting in his classes. Ask if he has done anything fun outside of class lately or what is going on around campus. Ask if his roommate has (finally) done his laundry yet. Tell him about the family dog, your neighbor’s activities, or what his little brother has done at home. </p>
<p>3.76 with a heavy course load and side research is amazing. You need to educate yourself about the recs for grad school. You don’t have to have a 4.0 to be admitted and/or successful. Wondering why you would possibly feel the need to call your son every night? Kudos to him for playing along with that 'cos my son would have been straight to voice mail by December. </p>
<p>Yes. I am NOT getting even the suggestion of psychological counseling. There has been ZERO reason given for it here. Way to alienate the poor guy.</p>
<p>OP - I have to agree with the others that your expectations are off. You need to let go of the reins. He sounds like an exceptional kid. You’ve done your job. Now let him do his. Let him be an adult. (Mistakes and all!)</p>
<p>Thank you for further advices, and to ClassicRockerDad- thanks for clarification, I appreciate it. I may not ask/talk about counseling part. He still maintained A in more than 50% of courses in the last semester, and A in all of the first semester. I said addicted to games, I think I exaggerated. My bad! Perhaps, I should just back off from asking about courses and grades, and let him handle by himself. I will just keep an eye behind the scene, and advise him only if things are really going to fall apart like going to lose scholarship, failing, etc. Instead, we will encourage him joining engineering associations, continuing gym, and bring him out for short tours during fall and winter breaks as he likes traveling. By doing so hopefully, he will win over games and focus on academics and research activities. </p>
<p>I am glad you are so open minded to listen to some of the very good advice here. That is very heartening.</p>
<p>I would not talk about counselling unless you son told you that he feels he has an addiction to video games. It doesn’t sound like he does, not even close. Do not try to remove down time/idle time from his life. Suggesting counselling would be alienating in this situation in my opinion. It just reinforces that you think he is not doing well. And that is the problem. He is doing extremely well and you aren’t giving him credit for it. What is his requirement gpa for his scholarship? If it is 3.5 then I can see why there would be a bit of worry and he probably shouldn’t push excess classes for the second year because the classes are going to go up in difficulty. It is always past the drop date when you realize that you can’t handle he load. 3.5 is a very stressful </p>
<p>I think you have been given very good advice to back off. I don’t find it appropriate for parents to monitor to the degree you seem to. At this point you should not need to know when he has exams etc. Personally, I didn’t ever know that, unless she brought it up in casual conversation, or even my child’s grades (and she went to grad school in CS.) If you can stop yourself from being so hypercritical then he will likely be more open minded to discussing the bigger issues, like class overloading. But at this point he doesn’t want to listen to anything.</p>
<p>I hope now you can start to change the relationship you have with your child now that he is more of an adult (I know, doesn’t seem like it.) Have a goal of changing from monitor to partner. Finding common ground, going on trips, encouraging other interests like gym is all very good start. You can let him know it is important to you to know about his classes and research and share in his successes and you are tying not to be so smothering. And practice giving him some praise and positive reinforcement.</p>
<p>A word about grad school. A high gpa is nice for the best programs but not required. The most important thing is research. Students with better research will get picked over students with higher gpa all the time. </p>
<p>Why is it necessary to plan for grad school now?</p>
<p>“A word about grad school. A high gpa is nice for the best programs but not required. The most important thing is research. Students with better research will get picked over students with higher gpa all the time.”</p>
<p>Yes. Very true. D’s research experience more than made up for her “not so perfect GPA” from her college known for tough grading. To think about it, I still have no idea what exactly her GPA was and have never seen her transcript.</p>
<p>OP, I will add that for grad school GRE scores are also important, but since you child aced the SAT, he can easily get a great GRE score.</p>
<p>There are many professions where a PhD or a Masters is not a necessity. My very successful MSFT and Boeing teammates did not have graduate degrees. OTOH, a PhD is a must for a life sciences researcher, especially if one wants to eventually get away from the bench and lead a research team.</p>
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<p>I read this to mean that that you said that he said that he was addicted to games. If he didn’t say that, just back off completely, let him live his life, and get some psychological counseling for yourself. There is no shame involved. </p>