I was reading the education section of CNN.com this evening and came across this article. I was fascinated. I didn't realize that parents were really involved to this extent in a students college life. Are they really? I know my parents didn't cause this kind of problem. I was expected to handle my own issues with the school.
Really. College is a time of learning, not just classroom education, but how to be an adult, living on your own. I agree with the schools on this one. I'm not saying that parental involvement isn't important, it is. However, there comes a time when children need to learn to stand on their own and solve their own problems.
There are times when parental involvement is appropriate. There was a girl down the hall from me who had very serious psychological problems (I believe she was schizophrenic) and had been threatening her roommate with physical violence. My friend (the roommate) had gone to everyone she could think of including the president of the college and no one would take her seriously. She finally had her father get involved.
But for things like the plumbing on a trip to China!? Really.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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There's a girl here whose mother apparently comes up every week, stays with her in the dorm room for a week, drives home for a week, then repeats the whole thing. And they're from South Dakota (my college is in New York). Kinda crazy if you ask me...
Her suitemates weren't too happy with the situation either.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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Yea, my mom wanted me to call home every week, but for me it made it feel like an obligation. But when my dad explained that it's because she was raised by a Southern Italian, it made a lot more sense. Family is very very important to Italians, particularly those in the south, and this was passed on to my mother. It makes it kind of annoying for me, because she seems overbearing, but now at least I'm not as irked by it.
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mild rant: I'd go further and say that not only am I annoyed by parents who are clingy, I'm annoyed by college administraions that are clingy and ACT like your parent.
I'm 20 - I should be able to live without supervision, but one must live in on-campus housing at my school, so that the school has the right to enter your building at any time to inspect it. I also should be able to request that my parents don't get my college bills, considereing that they're my bills that my parents shouldn't have any right of access to, but it'll take about 5 meetings with various administration people to get that worked out.
/mild rant
I dislike being treated like a kid when it's convient for authorities, yet being held accountable under the law as an adult. Thank goodness my parents pretty much gave me my freedom sometime in high school, once I proved that I could be responsible about it.
Parents who aren't willing to let their adult children go are only slowing down their development into full adults, in my view. And, yes, 18-year-olds are adults, according to society, although they may not be *mature* adults yet. But maturity comes partly from learning how to make mistakes on your own.
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Jhai: Do they have the right to enter your room and look through stuff? Because here, they don't. If something is broken, maintenance the right to go in and fix it. But RA's are not allowed to search your room. They're not even allowed to go into your room alone.
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When I was in Israel last year, there was one girl in one of my classes who was really pissed off, because her roommate's mom just moved in. She was there about six weeks, at least, before the administration even bothered to answer this girl's complaints. The mom was just living there, cooking, and making sure people did their homework, and cleaning and so forth... in the dorm room.
I can't even imagine what that would be like.
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bump this thread for me in one year, okay? When Ivygirl goes to college. To remind me to let go.... Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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It should be noted that, parents or no parents, you don't learn how to be an adult at college.
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You get closer, though. Some people never learn to be an adult, but one of the purposes of our university system is to transition people into adulthood, by giving them more responsibility while still watching over them.
One of my friends was woken up every morning in college by a phone call from his mother. She was in Louisiana, and he was in DC.
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quote:Colgate is making educating students a higher priority than customer service.
Hooray for this; the attitude of, "I'm paying for this, so you're here to serve me," from students is something I think just isn't right. I'm here to educate them, not "give them good customer service" by giving them grades they don't deserve.
On topic, I think that parents should back off during college. I don't think they should be completely absent from the student's life, but I think JT is right. College is supposed to be where you begin to learn to be an adult, and having parents holding your hand every step of the way definitely prevents that.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I see two separate/related issues here. I see a group of parents who haven't figured out how to let go of their kids and allow them to be adults. And I see a group of kids who either enjoy being coddled or haven't figured out how to stand up for themselves. And although I came from a family where this wasn't an issue anymore by the time we each graduated high school, I would think that going to college and the (lack of) physical proximity issues that come along would be the perfect catalyst to that change on the part of both the kids and the parents.
As for those mothers who are spending significant amounts of time in their children's dorms... that's just wrong on so many levels. And I'm stunned that it would take an administration six weeks to address an illegal tenant issue.
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quote: Hooray for this; the attitude of, "I'm paying for this, so you're here to serve me," from students is something I think just isn't right. I'm here to educate them, not "give them good customer service" by giving them grades they don't deserve.
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: It should be noted that, parents or no parents, you don't learn how to be an adult at college.
Like Goo Boy, I fail to see how this is true for all students at college. Some students certainly don't learn how to be an adult while at college - instead, they learn how to party. Some of the students at my college have credit cards whose bill goes direct to their parents, who then pay it off every month.
But for myself, and the crowd I generally hang with, college is about being an adult. I pay all my own bills, balance my checkbook, go grocery shopping, cook my own meals, clean my apartment, put the trash out on the curb every week, make sure I have enough sleep to function at my jobs and in my classes, volunteer in the community...
What more do I need to do to qualify as an adult?
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote: But some schools, while glad to see parents care, are expressing concern over the downside. During freshman orientation this year at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, administrators urged parents not to call their children but to let them call home when they want to talk.
I just have to mention that my brother had pointed this article out to me because they wrote this part in reaction to something he said about "DO NOT CALL YOUR KIDS" to parents at one freshman orientation session (he's an orientation leader at Northeatern).
Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: It should be noted that, parents or no parents, you don't learn how to be an adult at college.
Maybe you didn't. Don't make that judgement for everybody. For some reason everyone thinks that all college students do is go to frat parties and get drunk. Not all college students do that. In fact none of my friends or myself did.
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I'll agree with andi330 on that one. Even though I have never really gone to college (I have some college credits, just a few away from an assoc.). My sister did go, and she isn't the "party all day and night until you drop" type of person. Sure, she'll hang out and have fun, but she takes care of her responsibilities first.
However, I do call my mom or dad about once a week if I can. It kinda makes up for being gone a year or so at a time. Then there's not being home for the past 6 Christmases (this year'll be #7), the past 6 Thanksgivings (ditto the previous paren's), and so on and so forth.
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quote:But for myself, and the crowd I generally hang with, college is about being an adult. I pay all my own bills, balance my checkbook, go grocery shopping, cook my own meals, clean my apartment, put the trash out on the curb every week, make sure I have enough sleep to function at my jobs and in my classes, volunteer in the community...
What more do I need to do to qualify as an adult?
I think being an adult, in the modern sense, is more about knowing how to take care of others than knowing how to take care of yourself. And it's also about maintaining a certain image, becoming more attached to your beliefs, and being a member of the adult community. And it's about being able to judge yourself without relying on the judgement of others to tell you if you are going in the right direction. It's especially about defining your own path. Adulthood is a good and bad thing in these respects.
I think it is possible to learn these things from college, but not from the college or the college community itself - only if you take a job outside the college, or have to confront other circumstances that teach you these things. Going to class, taking care of yourself, choosing your major/classes etc. is not going to do it by itself - because these things still provide you with a well-structured, self-oriented path to follow.
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quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by Tresopax: It should be noted that, parents or no parents, you don't learn how to be an adult at college. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe you didn't. Don't make that judgement for everybody. For some reason everyone thinks that all college students do is go to frat parties and get drunk. Not all college students do that. In fact none of my friends or myself did.
I also disagree with the statement that you don’t learn to be an adult at college. I certainly did (although my mother said I was ready to leave home a year before I went, so may be I was half way there all ready).
I did spend much of my time going out to pubs and nightclubs, getting drunk, socialising and enjoying myself. I also got up for my lectures, did my work, got the grades I wanted and managed my finances.
I also made a conscious decision to develop skills (like public speaking) that I hated but thought would be useful in the future.
I didn’t need to go to my parents for help at every little difficulty and don’t think I am much different now (except that I need more sleep!). I still go out to pubs, spend much of my spare time socialising and make sure the necessary things get done.
My confidence developed in the first week at college where I went from being shy and awkward at school to appearing confident and outgoing. That appearance became true confidence when I found it worked. (I told myself when I started that no one knew anyone, so no one had any reason to dislike me so I had as much chance of making friends as anyone else and it worked).
I left college very much an adult.
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quote:Originally posted by kojabu: Yea, my mom wanted me to call home every week, but for me it made it feel like an obligation
Uh, calling home once a week isn't that bad of an obligation. Seriously find something better to spent your time being irked about.
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I disagree, Tresopax - not with your definition of adulthood (although I do have some problems with it), but with the idea that colleges cannot foster the sort of ideas that you consider key to adulthood.
However, I have to go meet Raia at the gym, so I'll post more on this later.
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I didn't learn to be an adult in college, because I don't think I learned to be a college student in high school I ended up making up the difference for both much later.
EDIT: To my credit, I've understood and practiced certain PARTS of adulthood for most of my life. But certain other parts were so completely taken care of by my parents that it took some real effort on my part to learn them on my own when I realized I had an experience deficit My parents were really helpful there when it came to giving me good advice, etc, but the desire and effort to learn had to come from me.
Not all kids develop that desire by themselves. I think parents need to take great care to ensure that their children have real opportunities to learn adult lessons before they are stranded completely on their own. Some people I know in their twenties are still completely helpless to make responsible decisions, and default immediately to dependency in every case. Their parents keep paying for their mistakes, and seem helpless to do much more to fix what's really wrong.
I'm really hoping I can learn from my observations, and do better with my own kids. It'll be hard. I have a strong tendency to try and take responsibility away from people when I see them struggling with something. To try and "fix" things. I'm betting I'll have trouble letting my kids go and try stuff and learn from their mistakes without hovering ... but at least my wife's not such a big softie. She'll probably keep me in line
posted
Wow, I can't believe that people wouldn't call their parents or parents not call their kids - I called my mother pretty much every day even when I was living on my own. I just can't fathom not keeping in contact with your immediate family. Maybe that's just a family thing - we are all really close and call each other every day even now. My sister in law calls every night, after she puts her kids to bed to chat with me and with my mom and before Mom lived with us I still spoke to her probably an average of three times a day.
The idea that I shouldn't call my kids in college is unbelievable. Not only do I think as a parent I should be checking on my child's welfare, (if they're full time students they are still dependents, after all) there is the idea that well, I love my kids, and I want to keep in touch with them and talk to them.
It's not about not cutting the cord or not trusting them or anything, it's just the idea that families keep in touch, that's part of what family is all about.
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I'm a college prof. I don't think my students have too much parental involvement -- but sometimes parents try! We'd rather students get over their homesickness, make their own decisions, and love mom & dad dearly.
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I rarely called my parents at all. I still don't. They have to read about me here
I think it really depends on the person and the family. I've always been a pretty independent kid, and though I lacked a few skills when I entered adulthood, I was always pretty confident that I could figure stuff out on my own. I don't get lonely very easily, unless I suffer from a profound lack of friends. So I didn't really think of calling my parents. It's not that I didn't want to talk to them, or wanted to forcibly establish my independence or anything. It just didn't occur to me unless something important was happening.
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College is indeed a good time to learn to be an adult (if you haven't already started along that path). I'm glad my parents weren't like some of the parents referred to in that article. They were actively involved in my college experience (because I was living home at the time), but I never suffered under any illusion that they were somehow responsible for my college experience. That was my task. I can kind of understand how things can get muddled when parents are paying for their children's education, but in that situation, I think it should make students more responsible, not less (since they're accountable not only to themselves for their actions, they're also accountable to their parents for their actions as they relate to the education they are paying for) and is something that should have been instilled prior to college (your parents shelter you in their home, so you are accountable to them for your use of their home, etc.).
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quote:Originally posted by kojabu: Yea, my mom wanted me to call home every week, but for me it made it feel like an obligation
Uh, calling home once a week isn't that bad of an obligation. Seriously find something better to spent your time being irked about.
Ok, you know nothing about my home life and my relationship with my parents, so please don't go making assumptions that I need to spend my time getting bothered with better things.
And you know, when someone says that something bothers them, it doesn't mean that it bothers them all the time. A lot of the time these types of things are bothersome at the time they are happening.
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I think the mentality that you have to go to college and instantly become an adult is a bit counter-productive. There's something very comforting about that middle stage, the entry into adulthood, but still having certain juvenile, fun qualities. That's why I like American colleges as opposed to universities abroad, where you basically instantly make the transition between being a kid and being an adult.
That doesn't mean that you're not an adult at college... it just means that you can still enjoy yourself, and you can still take things easy, without freaking out about a career and starting a life of your own. I feel much much more like an adult since coming to college, but I'm not worrying about my lifelong career path or anything yet. I'm enjoying myself. WITHOUT having to go out and get drunk to do it.
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Tres, I ahve a completely different idea of college than you do, I think. I realize that a lot of people avoid responsibilities in college, but there is usually a price to be paid for that...sometimes for the first time in their life.
I think that it can, and usually does, help quite a bit in growing up these days, at least for teh majority of kids.
Even if they don't end up working in their fields, this si the first time most of them had a significant input into what they were going to do with their lives.
I think a lot of lesons are there to be learned, and while there will always be the "party hardy" types there, most students make huge strides in becomming independant fromtheir parents, adn in learning not just knowledge from their classes but from the entire experience.
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Many of you seem to be implying that becoming an adult is a good and necessary thing, but I think that is only partially true. There are aspects of adulthood in America, such as taking responsibility, that are very positive and necessary for a healthy person growing older. But there are other aspects of adulthood that are negative, and that I quite frankly hope people never succomb to, even though almost all do. These are things like the sacrifice of idealism, the giving up of so-called childish fun, the inflexibility of body and mind, the accumulation of fears, and a whole variety of behaviors adults are supposed to take on in America to be considered adult. Ideally I don't think these things should be a part of adulthood, but in practice in this country, they are virtual prerequisites - and so I consider them a part of becoming an adult too. Thus in my view, becoming an adult in the practical sense of the term is in part a good change, but in part a change for the worse, with learning to take responsibility being only a small portion of those changes.
My view of college is definitely not one of partying all day. I don't drink and never attended a frat party, and truthfully I thought people who spent all their time doing that were wasting college. I believe that college should be about expanding one's horizon's, developing as a person, discovering one's values, gaining broad skills, learning how to learn, and in general becoming a good person. (I take a very liberal artsy viewpoint, I suppose.)
And that's where I see the conflict between learning to be an adult and college. To me, adulthood seems to be hostile to new learning ("You can't teach an old dog new tricks" is the expression.) It seems hostile to expanding one's horizon's. It seems inconsistent with college-esque idealism. Yes, I think adulthood SHOULD include all these things, and I think many adults succeed in doing so, but I think our society pressures them not to and pushes the idea that adulthood is not about those things. In this respect, college seems to me to be somewhat aimed at fighting off adulthood - or at least certain major negative aspects of it.
But that's not all. There are also some very positive characteristics of adulthood that I think are at odds with the ideals of college. Adults need to be able to define the structure of their own lives, develop independently, and find value not only in working for themselves but also in working for others. I think these things are necessary to become a complete person, but they are also things college makes it easy to avoid. The structure of semesters, classes, and grades is far more secure than the totally open-ended real world. You have a defined path, no matter what major you pick, and you are guided along that path. You have responsibility only for yourself and your own accomplishments, and I don't think you are really encouraged to think otherwise. I wasn't, at least.
It should be noted I've been out of college for a couple years and I don't really consider myself an adult. In fact, as I implied above, I think it would be better for me if I didn't ever become an adult in all the typical respects. I hypothesize that it is possible to be responsible in the way adults are without taking on the other negative traits associated with adulthood, because I've met a few adults who seem to embody that. But I nevertheless think those things ARE a part of becoming an adult in this society, because they are expectations placed upon adults. Adulthood is more of a rank assigned to you than something you really are. You are an adult when people consider you an adult - and that means not only being responsible and being independent, but also acting in the manner of adults.
I suppose you all are right in that college does teach you certain aspects of adulthood, just like grade school before it teaches you certain aspects of adulthood. College does teach you independence. It does teach you decision making. It does teach you confidence. It most definitely teaches you how to wash clothes (unless, like certain college students I know, your mom pays to get them professionally washed for you). Still, I don't think these lessons are enough to be considered a full adult. They are only a limited part of the way. Unless you were in atypical college circumstances, I think you will have to learn more - particularly from working and/or having a family, and from simply interacting among adult society (in contrast with college society, which definitely has different standards of behavior). I'm a bit skeptical of claims to have graduated as a full adult, if only because of all the fellow graduates I knew, I would consider none of them an adult at graduation. And I never really saw that as a problem... given the people I've met in life, I've never seen much evidence to conclude that growing up quickly makes one a better person, nor the opposite.
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Well, since being an adult is an ever changing thing, I have to say that one is never finished learning because all life is a school. But if you think that becoming an adult means giving up your ideals and resigning yourself to a life you never intended to live, you've been meeting a lot of very cynical adults.
Adulthood is not about giving up your ideals, but how to live your life in tandem with them. Most of the "adults" that I know, have worked hard to find a balance that allows them to do both. I'm very sorry that you aren't meeting those people. Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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If being an adult is defined as "taking care of others" than it actually kind of makes sense that I was an adult about age 7 or 8. Because while I had physical adolescence in a lot of ways mentally I was already an adult by then.
A couple of things happened. Mom got Strep several times in a row, and I had to keep tabs on my little brothers mostly on my own. She directed from her bed, but I did more of the physical labor and actual caretaking.
The other thing was that she taught me how to read maps, and thereafter I was expected to navigate her everywhere, because she has a horrible sense of direction. And, while she is a safe driver, actually directing her any place while driving is the caretaker role, because she becomes much more of an emotional child, tantrums and all, so I was the one making the decisions on where to turn.
To this day, I am unable to take navigational directions from her, because I have no confidence in them. And her way of explaining how she gets there, while comprehensible to her own mind, takes about 10 times as long as simple turn right here and turn left there instructions.
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