<p>I'm a mother of only-child, freshman this year.
I've been heart-broken this summer because our relationship was very bad.
There was a thread in this forum which helped me to realize that I'm not the only who deal with the attitude "summer before college".
I think my son is currently dating with this girl since his last 2 mos in high school.
They also go to the same college. By chance, I've checked his text message history by locking into our phone account online and saw that he has been texting with this girl constantly every other minutes. They even text in the middle of the night, as late as 2-3AM, then again 5 or 6AM. I've confronted him and told him that I'm concerned about him not getting enough sleep. I told him that I saw the texting history by chance, not because I was spying on him. He denied, said that the latest he text would be 1AM.
Now that school has started, I just worry that he does not get good sleep and not being able to study well. I "texted" him and let him know my concern, not mentioning anything about the other girl, telling him that now school has started, please refrain from texting from 1AM to 8AM. He just replied said that "jeez, let me breath..." I don't know if he's going to listen to me. This girl is his first relationship and he's probably in deep love right now. How should I deal with this problem? Any suggestions?</p>
<p>I think you need to give your son some space. If your concern is his sleep, well, just be glad he’s in his room and not partying at 1am.<br>
He isn’t going to listen to your concerns about his sleeping hours. If it makes you feel better, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sleeps in until 9am, still getting 7 hours or so. Kids at college stay up late and sleep late. It’s normal, even if it’s not the healthiest way to live.
It’s time to let him regulate himself and have some independence.</p>
<p>I agree. You can’t forbid the relationship – how could you possibly enforce that? He’ll figure out soon enough that he needs more than 3 hours of sleep a night. On the upside, with that kind of schedule, they’ll both be cranky, start getting on each others’ nerves, and break up sooner rather than later. ;)</p>
<p>Let’s see:
freshman, first love, and texts his GF all the time (even though she goes to the same college). Presumably, his college experience will change once his classes really get going. He’s probably doing this b/c everything is new and he has an audience. I don’t suggest you do anything just yet to sabotage your relationship. And sleep? As my own college kids explain it, “Sleep is overrated.”
You’ll need to back off. He’s away at college and classes JUST started. He’s right: give him some breathing room.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your replies. Now I know that I need to adjust my attitude.</p>
<p>You’re a good mom. 
And this is a good first step. You’ll get lots of practice at “letting go” over the next months and years.</p>
<p>Texting at all hours of the day and night does not imply a deep relationship. That’s normal for kids his age. He can actually focus better on his studies with all that texting going on than he could if he were not allowed to text.</p>
<p>^^However, if you are paying $$ for him to go to that college, you have the right to let him know that he is there to get an education, which means he has to pass his classes. If his first grades suffer, come Dec -for what ever reason, which believe me , they do know why- - there should be consequences, and you can and should let him know that now. Then it will be up to him to make sure he is not wasting your $, and his time. College kids DO often underestimate how much sleep they really need, until its too late, and they have dug themselves into a hole that’s hard to climb out of. So treat him like an adult, by letting him know that you expect him to do his best in his new job- just like in the real world…</p>
<p>Let him mess up on his own. If he is not getting enough sleep because he is texting this girl he may take a hit in grades. If he doesn’t realize what he needs to do by then I would say he is asking to fail.</p>
<p>All you can do is state minimum GPA req’ts. “If your GPA fall below X.X, the checkbook closes and you’re coming home.”</p>
<p>Also, be sure to have access to his grades throughout the semester to see how he’s progressing. </p>
<p>This way, if he texts like crazy and still gets a 3.5 (or whatever), then he’s managing the situation.</p>
<p>DD1 has been known to text 12,000 a month if not in school. After I dropped her off yesterday (her significant other also attends the same school) and all thru summer I explained that if I see text messages during class, or late at night, etc. the first response would be to block texting on her phone - the second is parental controls, and the third is she’s done with school, period. </p>
<p>Texting is not as innocent as one may think - it is a tremendous time waster (2-3 hours a day) with little bandwidth for real information - much like a lot of the social media etc. Used properly, it is a great tool, but unfortunately it takes a lot of willpower to cut down 12000 to 1200. </p>
<p>If the kid is in a family plan look at the usage online and see if there are texts during class and/or extended text sessions in the evening (study hours) or night. Sure, they can go on Facebook and chat their hearts out, but if one action is taken, and they are see it, they know you’re serious. </p>
<p>Waiting ‘till they fail’ or till midterms is too late.</p>
<p>No, I’m not Amish :-). I do software for mobile devices for a living of all things…</p>
<p>turbo93, I actually have same thought: wait until mid-term or Dec is too late. Adjusting to college classroom is hard enough. My son is thinking about some kind of healthcare career, perhaps pre-med or bioenginerring,very competitive at his university. GPA is very important in these majors. I really don’t know whether I should be firmed or this is just too much… I also know that the other girl is thinking about pre-med as well. I thought about telling my son if he does not stop texting in the middle of the night, then I can also text the other girl, asking her to cooperate… or try to contact her parent to have a talk. They went to the same HS, so I should be able to find out their tel. Their pattern texting is like this: 3AM is last msg, then 5AM, 6AM, 7AM… until they get up in the morning then it’s constantly every other minute, if not every minute or so.
For this generation, I’ve learned that they can multitasking. In HS, I’ve seen him doing homework with music, TV, PC and texting at the same time. But sometime, he told us that he goes to the library to study, so he can concentrate.</p>
<p>If I’m pushing too hard, it will create even more distance between us, but can I afford to let him learn from his mistake? He also has his own saving account, which I’m on his account as well. What if he decide to get his own cell with his allowance then I would not know.
He also “negotiates” that he’d get $150/mo for his allowance. I would think that he can use this money as well to get his own cell.</p>
<p>He’ll be coming home for the Labor Day’s weekend. May be I should wait to see his texting pattern in the next 2 weeks or so, then have a talk with him face-to-face? Problem is when we talk, he gets irritated. I hope that sharing my problem helps other parents as well.
Thanks everyone for your advices</p>
<p>When people are young they lack a certain self control. This is not about first love, it is about with lack of sleep will he be able to get up to go to classes and getting his work done. I am also in the camp of waiting until midterm or winter break is too late. If his grades tank due to lack of self control, may it be texting, drinking, partying, video playing, then he is not matured enough to be left alone.</p>
<p>We had a similar situation with D1 when she first started college. She got into a lot of her girlfriends’ drama in school, so I noticed she was texting in the middle of the night. They would text her to “talk” about their bad hookups, or wanted her to them up because they were too drunk. I spoke to her about it, but she told me that she was fine, those textings were really quick and she was able to fall back asleep. Well, I ended up using parental control on our wireless service, I disabled her service between 12-7am on weekdays. It only lasted few days because she told me she would stop texting late at night.</p>
<p>D1 also had her own money and had an allowance from us, but she was a smart girl, it wasn’t worth it to give all that over texting, and she knew I was right. Now 4 years later, she is out of college with a job, she is still on our phone plan. We had an agreement with her about how we would continue to fund her college education (3.0 GPA), and allowing her to join a sorority (3.5 GPA).</p>
<p>I’m just wondering how do you know what they’re texting about? The texting message history only show the number, time and date of incoming/outgoing message. I have T-Mobile</p>
<p>Personally, I do not want to know what my kids are texting about. And if I did want to know, I’d suppress my curiosity out of respect for their privacy. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>I am not sure I agree with the ‘as long as they bring in 3.5 from Cornell let them text till the phone wears off’ approach for other reasons. </p>
<p>The biggest reason is this - professor egos. It’s one thing to be texting in HS during class (AP Elbonian Government) where you’ll never see the teacher again. In college, professors care about their ego and few would tolerate a regular (30-50 size) class where someone is texting or facebooking their life away. Especially in a program where the prof will be encountered again in the future.</p>
<p>DD1 is an Architecture student and as we know, these folks have their own little universe. In a 4-5 hour studio not every passing moment is spent using the fabled Mayline parallel bar ($137)… So, one could whip out the phone for a quick chat which in theory would not have a catastrophic effect on grades, not any more than browsing archinet.com… But Arch profs have egos and such egos can be affected by such things…</p>
<p>Think corporate world. You’re in a useless meeting that you did not need to be and you spend some time playing Angry Birds. While it has no impact to your job performance, it gives a bad impression, and these are hard to overcome…</p>
<p>I didn’t know what D1 was texting about, but I could see the frequency and to whom. I asked her and she told me.</p>
<p>
I didn’t say that. I said for us to fund her college education and allowing her to join her sorority.</p>
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<p>You’re very lucky that she shared with you. My son is one of those who came to told me that “Mom, I have first date today”. But then that was history, ever since he started seeing this girl, everything is so secret. We always told him that we do not forbit dating as long as the grade does not fall.</p>
<p>Teens and college kids being secret about their romantic lives is completely normal, and lots of boys might not have even told you as much as he did. It’s just something we have to accept; as they get older, we are less and less involved in their lives. It’s hard, but the sooner we accept it, the happier we – and our kids – are going to be.</p>