College Parenting 101: Why we can't just "let go"

If you attended college any time before 1990 there were probably no parent orientations, parents’ associations, or family weekends at your college. In fact, if your parents ever spent any time at your college beyond move-in day or graduation you were part of a small minority. Obviously, things have changed dramatically over the past few decades, and colleges and universities are ramping up programs for the parents and families of their students that were completely absent 30 years ago. Some reasons for these changes in programs are:

1. College costs much more. I mean, much more, than it did 30 years ago.  I know I don’t need to tell you this since you are still swooning from the sticker shock you have undoubtedly experienced in the past several months. With these higher costs come higher expectations, especially from parents who are footing most, or at least more, of students’ college expenses.
2. We live in the age of twenty-four hour per day, seven day per week , three hundred and sixty five day per year communication and information. With cell phones, video chat, and social media readily available to almost everyone, we have come to expect the ability to find information and contact anyone, in any place, at any time immediately. This means that when students have even small problems they can immediately call a parent for advice instead of having to wait to find a phone. Years ago, waiting to find a phone, and the time to call one’s parent, meant that we had the time to process problems and decide whether or not they were worth discussing with a family member, which they usually weren’t.
3. Constant access to news media from around the world also means that any crisis that occurs at any college in the country, or anywhere in the world seems like it happened next door and is surely a crisis where our child attends. We fear that it is threatening them personally, instead of an isolated incident. We no longer have the comfortable insulation of time and distance to temper these sensational news stories and safety is always on our minds.
4. Our generation of parents has had fewer children than previous generations, and we have been more involved in their lives both in and out of school. In other words, we have a lot of time, money, effort, and love investing in our 2.06 children and their success. We have been told since they were in utero that we are 100% responsible, both socially and legally, for their care and behavior. Now, all of a sudden when they enroll in college, we are supposed to simply let go of this “adult” who it seems was just yesterday hitting a baseball off a tee. Letting go of your child is easier said than done, and most of us, and our college-bound children face a steep learning curve in these lessons of letting go.

What to Expect During Freshman Orientation and Enrollment: Part 2

Campus involvement opportunities - Orientation programs often invite a number of people to talk with your student about campus involvement. Sometimes these sessions take the form of an activities showcase where a broad range of campus groups set up tables or displays that allow current members of these groups to interact with you and your child or pass out information about their organization. Other times a few offices will talk specifically about the multitude of ways to get involved and then show students how to find clubs to join and what to expect from those clubs.  Either way the goal is the same. To let new students know that college is more than just class time, and being happy and healthy on campus means being involved outside of class.

Safety and emergency information -This is one of the sessions that is often held jointly with parents and students. We know that you are concerned about your child’s safety and even if your child doesn’t tell you, he is too, even if its just because he doesn’t want you to freak out. Campus Safety is vital to the academic mission of the university, because it is extremely difficult to learn in an environment in which you don’t feel safe.

Campus police or security will often give students details about how to stay safe on campus and what to do in an emergency. Advice like locking doors, being aware of one’s surroundings, and securing property are all common tips provided by campus police, and it’s important for students to realize that their actions can play a major role in their own safety. Having this session with parents and students together assures you that your child has received this information as well.

Enrollment - The vast majority of summer orientation programs also include the student’s enrollment in his first semester of classes. These enrollment sessions are usually held for the students alone so they can sit down with an adviser, counselor or peer mentor to select classes and plan a schedule. Keep in mind that a lot has changed since we were in college and had to stand in line for hours to get a schedule that was virtually etched in stone when we left the registrar’s office.  Today, students can easily change class schedules online. This freedom is both a blessing and a curse.

Having the flexibility to change one’s schedule almost daily until classes start is very convenient, but please remind your child that just because he can change his schedule, doesn’t mean that he should.  Students have been known to accidentally enroll in senior or graduate level classes because the names of the classes were similar to the ones in which they were enrolled.  When this happens it is not uncommon for the class to be automatically dropped from the schedule, leaving the student short on classes and credit hours.

Advisers usually recommend that students can change sections or times of classes as long as they enroll in the same classes they had enrolled in during orientation. So, a student may freely change from the 8:30am section of English Composition I into the 9:30am section of English Composition I, but should avoid changing from English Composition I into World Literature I even though they are both introductory level English classes.  Once he gets into the swing of college there will be plenty of time to explore classes and take more diverse coursework, but for now, it’s best to leave well enough alone. 

* Suggest that your child enroll in early classes at least three days per week, or at least wake up as early as possible. Taking classes from 9:00am or earlier each day means that students aren’t sleeping through half of their days.  They will still stay up late, but early risers tend to have better time management skills and more time during the day for classes, study, work and other activities.

If, at the end of orientation, you still have questions or if once you return home and have a chance to process all the information you received, you still have questions, don’t hesitate to call the appropriate office or the general number for the orientation or parent relations office. We are used to fielding calls and emails about just about anything and can find the appropriate person to answer your questions.