End of Semester Wrap-ups

For most students, the spring semester will end before their spring break tan lines fade. This is the time of year when deadlines, exams, and papers come fast a furious. On my campus, students have only three busy weeks of classes after they return from spring break and this is also a very busy time of the year socially. There are numerous scholarship banquets, end of the year student club meetings, and a final community service push before students leave campus. All of this activity can leave your child feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, so this is a great time for you to talk with him or her and conduct a mental wellness check. As you talk to your student ask:

• What big deadlines or exams do you have coming up? How are you preparing for them? Asking your student about how he plans to work on assignments isn't prying, it's actually a good way for you to prompt him to think about how he will finish the semester strong.

• Do you need any time away from campus? This may be a good time for a weekend visit home where your child can get away from campus and concentrate on studying or finishing papers without distractions.

• If you suspect your child is feeling stressed or needs help from a counselor, this is a good time to remind him about campus resources that can help him with study skills, time management, or stress management.

• Send him a care package or a pizza party. Care packages are fun to send any time of the year but this is a great time to send a little extra something to your child. Treats from home and gift cards are popular or you can also send a pizza party from the internet. Many national (and local) chains offer online ordering for everything from pizza, to wings, to salads and drinks. A typical pizza and wing combo from Pizza Hut runs about $40.00. Order it from home and have it delivered to your child at college *Always make arrangements with your child in advance!

What to Expect This Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving break may very well be the first time your child will come home this semester and there are some universal experiences that all college parents face when their child returns home from college for the first time.

1. Most students will sleep a lot when they get home.  Not only are they tired from traveling, but they are probably mentally exhausted from being “on” all semester. The first semester of college is mentally, emotionally, and physically draining, so let them sleep.

2. Once your child arises from a 10 hour nap, he will probably want to eat and see his hometown friends. This can be painful for parents since you’ve been waiting for months to see your child, but all he wants to do is go out with other people. You can approach this from two angles; you can insist that he stay at home for the first evening and see his friends later, or you can let him go out with his buddies and plan to see him during the rest of the break. There’s no correct way to handle this, but the one thing that is essential is communication. Express your expectations for “family time” before he returns so everyone knows what to expect.

3. Go ahead and coddle during the break. While it’s crucial that students learn to care entirely for themselves while they’re at college, when your child is home for break a little spoiling won’t hurt. If you want to make a big breakfast, do it. If you want to do all her laundry, go for it, but don’t do these things out of a sense of guilt or duty. Just do them from a position of love and caring, and by all means expect a “thank you” from your child!

4. Thanksgiving break is too short. By the time your child sleeps for a day, visits with friends for another, helps out with a few household or yard chores, then sleeps away another day, the break is over and he’s gone again. Rest assured that even though this visit is way too short, you’ve probably had just enough time together. A four to six week winter break will arrive within about three weeks and for some families, that gets a little too long!

"We ended up arguing on Family Weekend!"

If you did, you’re not alone. Like move-in day, Family Weekends are often heavily laden with high and unrealistic expectations on both sides. Your child really does want to see you, but he probably also wants to hang out with friends over the weekend too. He may have high hopes that you’ll take him to the local Wal-mart or Target to stock up on what he considers necessities and you consider junk. Communicating about expectations before the weekend is essential to avoid disappointment.

About a week before you arrive for the weekend, confirm where and when you will arrive and discuss where and when you would like to spend time with your child. You may both decided that it will make more sense for you to meet for dinner on Friday night, attend the Friday night concert and then skip the Saturday morning events and see each other a couple of hours before the game. You may also decide that you don’t want to try to sit with your child at the game, but that your younger child will join him in the student section of the stadium. Maybe your child has started attending a campus church service on Sunday mornings and wants you to join him for that before you visit his favorite campus haunts. 

Whatever you decide to do, talk it over first and nail down some specifics, but also be flexible when you arrive on campus. Remember, you’re there to see your child and get a feeling for how he’s doing and what his life is like in his new home, a set schedule is nice, but not necessary.

Parents' or Family Weekends on Campus

Family Weekends or Parents’ Days used to be held at only large universities with well-established parent programs, but now most colleges have some sort of weekend or just a Saturday where parents are invited to spend some time with their child at his or her new home on campus. It’s no accident that most colleges hold their family weekends at about four to eight weeks into the fall semester. By that time, not only has your child finally settled into a routine on campus and can show you all the local hot spots, but you and your child are ready for a nice long visit.

On my campus and on countless other division one universities across the nation, these weekends often fall on a home football weekend. As the person who plans the weekend and coordinates student groups and others who plan events on these weekends, I sincerely apologize for the sometimes rushed feel of the weekend. I can honestly say that I lie awake at nights hoping and praying that kickoff isn’t moved before 2:30pm.

I always worry about families feeling rushed under these circumstances, but overall, as the day winds down to an end and families are still enjoying post game tailgates and strolling through campus gardens, I am reminded that family weekend isn’t about football games, tailgates, buying matching t-shirts or even the events that student groups hold during these days, it’s about families getting together and enjoying their changing relationships. It’s about parents seeing their child as an adult for perhaps the first time, and students seeing their parents as the college students they once were, and bonding over this experience they now share.

If you are disappointed that you are unable to attend your child’s family weekend due to a conflict or distance, don’t worry. Any weekend that you can make it to campus is a “family weekend”, a chance for you to share a unique experience with your child. In fact, planning a visit later in the semester is just as much fun. If you time it right and avoid game days and other busy weekends on campus you may find that hotel rooms are cheaper and there are no long waits at local restaurants.

I receive a lot of calls from parents before family weekend asking what they should do with their child on the weekend. While there are usually a number of events planned for the weekend, we realize that you can’t attend them all.  The most important thing to do is to discover what your child’s life is like on a daily basis. Ask for a tour of his or her classrooms, ask him to take you to his favorite place to eat, or ask him to show you his favorite places to hang out. Doing this gives your child a chance to show you what his life is like every day so the next time me mentions that he’s on his way to his biology lab, you’ll know where that is.

Younger siblings usually love visiting for family weekends and if possible, enjoy spending the night in your college student’s dorm room while you stay at a hotel. Younger kids are usually pretty flexible and a small cot or a sleeping bag on the floor is a fun way to spend the night with their older sibling in the “grown up” atmosphere of a college residence hall. 

Visits Home

Visits home

Just like Family Weekends and other visits to campus, you will probably put a lot of stock into your child’s occasional visits home. Unless he is living at home and commuting to college, you probably won’t see him too often, and that’s probably what you both expected and wanted. Not that you don’t want to see him, you just know that for him to develop into an independent adult, he needs to start being less reliant on you and the familiarity of home, and more reliant on himself in his own place. Even so, there will be times when your child visits home for a weekend or longer.

These visits are a great time to catch up with your child on some academic or financial issues and plans for the future, but before you jump into discussing next semester’s class schedule or summer job plans give him a little time to settle in. “Settling in” can mean different things to different people. Some students will come home and immediately have a snack and go to bed for the rest of the day. Some will simply drop their bags in their room and head out to visit old hometown friends. Unless you and your child have specifically set a date to discuss these issues, I suggest leaving them alone for about a day before you even think about having a meaningful conversation about anything. 

Curfews during visits home

Some parents insist on their child resetting to the same house rules they had before they left for college while others swing in the opposite direction and give their child carte blanche. In all actuality, your child probably expects to have at least some house rules reinstated when he returns home, but as is the case with everything, flexibility is key

You may extend his curfew or let him slack on the chores as long as he’s willing to negotiate with you. Maybe you both agree to extend his curfew as long as he checks in on the hour, from midnight until 2:00am. With everyone carrying cell phones complete with alert functions on the calendar, he should be able to do this without a problem. Let him know that you aren’t asking him to do this because you don’t trust him, just let him know that you honestly can’t sleep until you know he’s home safe and you really don’t want to stay up until 3:00am. Remind him that adults respect their family members’ needs and are willing to compromise their own desires to help out others.

* For every college student there comes a point when he considers college to be “home.” This is usually discovered by accident when he leaves your home after a visit and says something like. “I have to get home before 8:00.” And you think to yourself. “But, you are home.” When this happens you can shed a quiet tear, but also breathe a sigh of relief knowing that he has found a college that he feels comfortable enough to call  “home”.