My mom went off to UT-Austin from the small town of San Angelo in 1956. Her parents told her she couldn’t come home until Thanksgiving. I guess she had a hard time adjusting, because she dropped a LOT of weight (and she was slender to start with). One of her friends finally called her parents and said she thought Mom needed a visit home. So they let her come home sooner.
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I would add - limit your texting, especially at the beginning. Give your child the opportunity to separate themselves from you at the beginning of school. If you’re constantly asking about classes and roommates they’ll just depend on you for advice instead of working it out.
And one more that I screwed up my daughter’s freshman year. Don’t help too much with class registration, first year forms, that kind of thing. I admittedly over-managed this with my daughter’s first term and she automatically expected me to just tell her what to take instead of working with her (admittedly awful) advisor or figuring it out on her own. Took her until sophomore year to completely take it over.
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Even better: Send your kid to college with a box or two. Either they’ll use them themselves, or they’ll be the most popular kid on the hall for having a ready supply!
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I tried to do this. Told D24 I was going to and she said, “Oh my gosh, Mama, please don’t. If I need some, I’ll figure it out. They’ll have bowls of them at the student health center or whatever.” 
I did put some Plan B pills in her first aid kit, though. 
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If you want your college kid to be able to go on vacation with you, plan it around their school schedule. Or you may have to accept that maybe your kid won’t be able to go with you, that’s not the end of the world. Also, the college years can be a good time for mom and dad to take a parent’s only vacation. And yes as the previous poster said, a professor definitely won’t make an exception so the kid can go on the family vacation…I don’t know why anyone would even think to ask!
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The only time I asked off was when I wanted to fly to Boston the week of Thanksgiving to visit my boyfriend at MIT. The professor had scheduled an exam that week. I’m surprised I had the nerve to ask! I was doing very well in the class, so he said sure - he let me take the test before I left.
Exactly.
You know what I want to do in the fall after we deposit D26 off at college?
Spend a few days at WDW’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. Wake up late and drink coffee on my balcony while watching the giraffes walk by. And eat and drink my way through Epcot’s Fall Food & Wine Festival. And to do it all without my kids saying that they’re bored or they’re tired of waiting for a ride or whatever. 
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I’ve mentioned this before but my husband only applied to one college (one of our state U’s). He never visited but chose the closest one to the city that he lived in. He got in, drove himself to orientation, moved himself in and moved himself out each year. His parents never set foot on campus. He was short credit hours, so he didn’t graduate (but did go back and finish his degree many years later).
My mom drove me to move in, but no one came back until I graduated 4 years later. It was my responsibility to get a ride home - until I brought my car back sophomore year and could drive myself. I don’t remember very many people’s parents randomly coming up for visits (this was in the mid-80’s). I think I called my parents maybe twice a month.
Same here! In my day parents only came for move in or move out. Every once is a while you might have some parent come pick up a student at Christmas break to go home. But for the most part college kids got themselves home at vacations. I do remember some parents coming every year to help kids move in and out, but that was it. I don’t think parents came to visit on random weekends, unless it was parent’s weekend or some very special situation…
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I’m still very close with all my college friends and none of us can remember there even being a parents’ weekend while we were there (the college has them now and they are well advertised). Maybe we were just too busy bar-hopping 
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As a mom now the most eyebrow raising thing my parents did was have me ask random people for a ride to campus from the airport. I would literally fly into the tiny Roanoke airport and walk up to random student age people and ask for a ride to campus! 
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Both my school and my brothers def had parents weekends. We went to college in the early 90s
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Parents’ weekend in the 80’s meant we had a choice of fresh lobster or filet for dinner on Saturday night. I was looking forward to caviar and truffles at S’s parents’ weekend since the COA was north of $80k vs about $10k in my day. We got chicken instead.
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I didn’t think VT has parents weekend when I was there in the early 90s, but according to AI " Virginia Tech first held Parents Weekend in 1959. The first Parents Weekend, which was called “Parents’ Day” at the time, took place in the spring semester."
I don’t think my parents got the memo… or maybe they did?
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I don’t remember anyone’s parents anywhere on campus during my undergrad years. If there was a Parents Weekend, I was unaware.
Parents (er, Taypayers) Weekend at the academy included a formal (black-tie appropriate) dinner with starched linens, crystal, china, flowers, champagne, prime rib and, perhaps, the Sec Def as speaker. Oh, and your kid was dressed to the nines.
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There was a parent’s weekend when I was in college. I do remember a college friend’s parents coming because she got some sort of award and there was a ceremony and reception afterwards and her parents came to that. But it was a special circumstance.
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There was a parents’ weekend for mine, too (late ‘80s, early ‘90s, and it was not a new tradition then). Typically, there were extra lectures/symposia for parents to attend, they could accompany their kids to classes, there was always a football game, etc. It was always in October, when our New England campus was at its prettiest. My parents and brother (because he couldn’t be left alone for the weekend) came out for my freshman year parents’ weekend. The following year, just my mom came, but during another weekend, when it was a little less crowded. And that was that (which was fine with me – though they did swing through town every once in awhile if they were traveling in the area). As is probably the case these days, first-year parents probably made up the majority of parents’ weekend visitors.
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There was a parent’s week-end at Bowdoin in the 80’s. My parents came ever year, including the year that I was in England and for years afterward. They loved Maine in October and if I wasn’t at Bowdoin, they could always get a lobster dinner somewhere else!
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if you share an amazon account, double check the mailing address before you order anything. i once went to the mail center and had eight packages waiting for me, including a several month supply of cat food.
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Just the other day I mistakenly sent a shipment of things I ordered to my D’s small NYC apartment. Oops. It will cost at least half the price of the order to ship it back to me, so that’s not going to happen. I hope she can use six ikea packing bags intended for my college son who I am going to help move out, as well as a rubbermaid power scrubber and other assorted cleaning products. It’s the first time I cursed Amazon’s same day shipping because by the time I realized what I did…maybe 20 mins or so, the order was already being picked and packed so I couldn’t cancel it.
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