In the spirit of the following article, I’d like to add my own to the list:
Don’t email or call your kid’s RA or the head of Student Life or the Dean of Student Affairs, etc. and ask/demand that the college provide a morning phone call wake up service for your adult child. Yes, this apparently really happens!
Don’t email your kid’s professors to ask why the student didn’t get a better grade on the assignment, project, test, or in the class overall.
Don’t go into “Mr/Ms Fix-It Mode” when your child calls to complain about something that isn’t going their way. Don’t fix their problems for them. Switch to guidance mode instead (“Have you considered __?” or “Have you thought about ___?” instead of “Go do X”). Change the questions you ask.
Don’t contact your child’s future roommate or the roommate’s parents on social media without your child’s knowledge and ok ahead of time. You’ll come across as a weird helicopter parent. Give your student some space to figure the roommate dance on their own.
Don’t cyber-monitor your college freshman’s location (i.e., using stuff like “Find My” on Apple products or the equivalent on Google devices) all the time during freshman year. Remember when you were in college back in the Stone Age, when your parents didn’t know where you were GPS-wise at every hour of the day? You don’t necessarily need to know that your kid is living it up at 2:00 am on a Friday night just off campus. If there’s an emergency, your child knows how to contact you.
Friend of mine (kid not a service academy grad) wanted to know “does anyone in my network have a contact at the Pentagon-- my son is being deployed overseas and I’m really unhappy with the way the military is treating him- he didn’t even get a CHOICE”.
We howled for weeks after that conversation.
And on the civilian side, I know MANY parents who think that professors want to hear from them to “explain” why their kiddo’s research paper is late, why kid slept through the review session, why the kid should be able to get an incomplete even though it’s past the deadline.
As somebody who has taught first year students, and has many friends and colleagues who have taught first years - parents have done this and more.
There are parents who move to be just off campus from their kids. There are parents who will accompany their kid to class and try to sit in on classes, and then “help” their kid with homework. There are parents who try to move in to their kid’s dorm.
Those are rare, but it is not rare is having to tell some parents that FERPA prohibits telling them their kid’s grades. At least once every semester.
A friend once said that, in the past you needed surgical sheers to cut the umbilical cords for some students, but now you need a blowtorch to cut the rotors off the helicopter.
At the parents’ orientation during freshmen move in weekend, the Dean of Something said that he actually had fielded calls from parents in the past asking/demanding that the college provide a wake up service. The Dean of Something then in a very hilarious and dry way said, “I’d recommend to teach your student how to use the alarm feature on their phone. Or teach them how to use an alarm clock. There are many varieties to choose from and Amazon delivers right here to campus.”
Many parents giggled in the audience and then he said with a deadpan tone of voice, “Yes, you laugh but they really do call and request this. We do not provide such a service at this institution of higher learning.”
Well I did contact possible roommates parents on social media but just in a “if you want to chat I am here but feel free to ignore me” way but yes child knew about it.
And I do have college kids location but I don’t have time to monitor it. I typically only use it if there is bad weather in the area. Sharing location is like Fight Club, we don’t talk about it.
And yes we both had access to a college app only email because some of the financial stuff depended on me and that way things weren’t missed.
I don’t know my senior in hs kids assignments grades and only look at grades during quarterly emails. I don’t think anyone who knows me in real life would call me a helicopter mom. Being divorced for most or all of my kids schooling years means I let go of the 24/7/365 control and “knowing” of my kids lives long ago.
I guess I would add- don’t make your kids grades and school choice your own personality. Unless college decision making or your kids specific school is being discussed, any mention of school name just sounds bragging, condescending, or arrogant. I get it. We are all proud of our kids. But as I would tell my kid, if you give unnecessary details about yourself in a random conversation you are likely just going to look cocky. If your specific school isn’t being talked about, nobody cares.
I’m very hands-off, but I do use 360. I use it to check where he is before I call, as I want to catch him at home, where he can actually chat for a bit.
Do not “design” your child’s room. Especially without them talking about it with their roommate. (I wish I could remember the infamous old post about a CCer’s experience with college drop off).
I, personally, wouldn’t share a lot of personal information with the roommate’s parents until you know it’s going to work out. A friendly hello at drop off will do. If it’s going well, maybe a dinner together at Parents Weekend.
Don’t assume that you can stay in your kid’s room while visiting. (And if you haven’t heard about the Sarah Lawrence scandal, read up on it and discuss with your kids how to handle something like this)
Don’t call the school because your kid doesn’t have A/C and it’s hot out.
If your kid doesn’t get the dorm they want, don’t make it worse by complaining about it yourself. Few do at my kid’s school, and they are all happy once they get there.
I actually use it that way too. I check to see if S19 is at work before video calling him.
Laughing as I actually did most of the picking out of things for both my boys but only with their approval and permission. I am frugal and thrifty and both got lots of compliments.
Even my D wasn’t able to talk to her freshman roommate. She was from China, she wasn’t on social media, and she hadn’t authorized the school to share her email with D. Frankly, it was not a good match for a variety of reasons, but NO … I didn’t intervene in any way. D figured out how to make it work (she hung out in a friend’s room, because the roommate didn’t want anyone other than D in the room). I might have suggested trying to compromise, but D didn’t ask for my opinion & I didn’t offer it.
I worked in higher education, so I knew enough not to call professors or staff!
All of this is great advice. I would only add this: long before freshman year, teach your child to advocate for themselves. Even in elementary school, children should approach teachers to resolve questions and solve problems. By middle school, they should be comfortable with this kind of communication, and they should possess the initiative to seek the information they need. Students should feel empowered to resolve problems or questions, but they should also know that sometimes a teacher’s policies might seem arbitrary or unfair, and it’s the student’s job to navigate those uncertainties and challenges without Mom and Dad stepping in. Of course parents can intervene if the problem is really beyond the student’s capacity to resolve or if there is some really egregious behavior on the teacher’s part. But the sooner students feel like they are capable of solving their own problems, the better. Then, parents won’t need a what-not-to-do list when college comes along. They’ll already know.
If you are the parent of a student with special needs, do not focus on advice from parents of typical students about forcing independence. Some students do require scaffolding / support to live their best lives. Don’t feel pressured or judged by those that don’t face the same parenting challenges.
I recently heard about someone doing this - they literally moved across the country to be near their kid. Very, very surprising. What happens when they graduate? Move again? Wild stuff.
