Basically @ucbalumnus, you are saying that parents have a right to be donkey posteriors no matter how much damage it does to their kids. I guess you are correct.
They do not have rights to their kids’ university passwords. Parents usually get their own passwords for things they are allowed to see - bills and grades if student allows.
Henry Cloud has a book “Boundaries”.
I think your dad and step-mom have overstepped their boundaries with you.
If you have a church and a Pastor you can talk to. Will read through the thread better, but as much as your parents want to do their best by you, they need to let you swim. You are not sinking so they do not need to be so super vigilant.
I was watching the news earlier, and needed to add one more reason why parents could be reasonably expected to be so intrusive: rehab, legal issues, or planning on running off to Syria…
Otherwise it’s not normal
OP, are your parents from the USA?
I do think parents have a right to access anything they pay for. My employers put all kinds of restrictions of my use of social media (blocked). We have no expectation of privacy because they told us, first day, ‘we WILL read your emails’ While they don’t listen to calls, there are logs of who we called and how long the call lasted. There are security cameras and they do monitor our comings and goings. There are no March Madness pools or Lotto pooled tickets. They get to set the rules because they own the equipment and pay the bills. And pay me.
I DO NOT do this with my kids because I want them to take responsibility for their own actions, including finances, but I do think I have the right. My name is still on their bank accounts because they like me to fix things if necessary. If they want to take my name off, they can but then I can no longer fix things for them as the bank won’t talk to me about their accounts. If there is a parent access to financial accounts at the college with my own log in and password, I don’t know about it. The way I access it, through their log in and password, works just fine for us. I’ve had to access each account several times, to send info to a scholarship, to actually pay the bill, and to get tax info. I did their taxes too, and called and told them “I’m pushing the send button, okay” and they each said yes.
I don’t agree with how OP’s parents are handling his college or cell phones or computers, but he’s not my child. I hate sneaking around and my kids know that, and that I’d be much more upset if they got a second cell phone without telling me. College freshmen are still teens, still making dumb mistakes. I think a better way to teach kids how to handle cell phones and social media is to grant more freedom as they gain maturity, and so I’ve done that with my kids, but I’m not the OP’s parent and I’m not going to tell him to sneak around. If he doesn’t like them reading his texts, don’t text. Don’t post pictures you wouldn’t want the world to see. Nothing on social media is private. Nothing.
My kids do have a choice not to use the phones if they don’t want me to know what they are up to. I find my kids to be quite boring so don’t check their emails or texts or snap chats or twitters (like I’d even know how to), but yes, I do think I have the right. They tell me their grades and we talk about how they can do better, but do I have the right to check them? Yes, because I set that as a condition of my paying tuition. Both my kids have gpa requirements for keeping scholarships, and I don’t want to get a surprise on the bill.
The counselor for the OP’s family sounds like a good idea to mediate a compromise or a plan to let him have more freedom.
Thank you, CC, for yet another topic for my children to use to screen potential mates. Make sure s/he doesn’t have high college debt: check. Verify that the parents aren’t controlling micromanagers: check.
Yes, they have the right to do a lot of things.
That does not make these things desirable things to do. The right to do something is not the same as the idea that doing that something is desirable, a concept that seems to be difficult for many to understand.
@austinmshauri, The reason the potential mate may meet the first test, low student debt, may be because they fail the second, a controlling micromanaging parent. Both my daughters would meet the first, so far no debt, because I have micromanaged their financial aid. DD1 has 6 sources of grants, scholarships, tax credits to pay her tuition and DD2 has 7.
Giving my access to their student account is the price they had to pay.
@Twoinanddone, I totally agree with you about not expecting an 18-year-old to handle a business deal involving tens of thousands of dollars. It’s a nice try on the part of the colleges, but my son didn’t buy it either. “Why,” he asked, “does the college expect you to stay out of my business just because I’m 18 when it involves accessing financial records but then turn around and demand a written permission slip from you before they let me live at home? I’m either in charge of my business or I’m not.” Colleges are businesses selling a product and families have every right to handle the business part of that deal however they see fit. I applaud your attention to detail. Your daughters are lucky to have such a smart parent.
The micromanaging I was referring to was the complete lack of privacy this young adult is enduring. Checking every text message and having total access to all social and college accounts is just wrong. @mom2collegekids is right when she says that people who use money as a weapon don’t stop after college. I’ve known people with parents like that. If they contributed money for a wedding, they felt that bought them the right to micromanage every last detail. If the young couple was foolish enough to borrow money for a downpayment on a house from them, they expected a say in which house was purchased. I even knew one family whose parents had an intercom system and eavesdropped on their teens whenever they wanted. Parents like that have no boundaries. Using money as a club is a foolish way to parent.
But are they on the path to being able to responsibly handle money matters on their own, without needing a controlling micromanaging parent hovering over them?
Please read Stanford’s Computer Usage and Network Policy. I’m sure it’s similar at other schools.
https://acomp.stanford.edu/about/policy
Basically, a student cannot give general unauthorized access to the parent by providing their passwords. The STUDENT would be held responsible. Stanford is an honor code school. Someone else who knew that the student shared the password would be REQUIRED to report your student. Suppose you leave a message about why the student hasn’t turned in an assignment. The roommate hears and wonders how you knew. He/she guess, reports and they open an investigation. Honor code violation. Poof.
DON’T PUT YOUR OWN STUDENT IN THIS SITUATION.
Most schools provide parents access to their own login for things that the student is allowed to share with them under FERPA. Parents by all means can use any means of coercion to force the students to provide this access. By they cannot coerce the student into providing their general password without violating policy (c).
ucbalumus, I fear they are not. They are coddled princesses who are happy to have me handle it and pay the remainder. I show them, tell them about the costs of college, but they just smile and nod (something learned on CC? is hard and messy and no fun, so they don’t want to. They go to schools in different states, are rarely with me, and it is hard to deal with over the phone. One child’s FA department (and really every department at the school) has been really a pain to deal with. She’s gone to the administration building and tried to fix things and couldn’t, and I’ve been able to handle it with a phone call.
They are responsible for their own spending money, books, most transportation on their own. Neither have any flex dollars left on their dining plans (good because they didn’t forfeit any or bad because there are still a few weeks left in the semester?) but are unlikely to starve. They both work (hard) in the summer but still don’t understand how much money it takes to live - rent, utilities, food, taxes, tuition, savings, more taxes.
I agree with some of what you’ve said here, @austinmshauri , but I don’t consider that parents who have offered signfiicant financial assistance with agreed upon preconditions are necessarily using money as a weapon.
We pay for pups’ cellphones, and we told them up front that since we don’t want them to send inappropriate texts, or to get addicted to texting as opposed to genuine human interaction, or a real voice phone call - we wanted to be able to monitor their texting. Mostly for quantity/volume purposes moreso than content, as we have raised our children to be respectful and truthfully they haven’t had a problem. Our kids text a lot less than most kids - but they have plenty of genuine friendships. We certainly get that there are times when a text message is more convenient than a phone call. But we decided years ago, before we got our kids their cellphones, that because we wanted them to communicate in person, or in voice, much more than by text, we came up with these “rules”.
We pay our family’s portion of college expenses, but told our kids before they applied that if their grades suffer too much, especially from lack of effort, we would stop paying. We don’t expect them to always excel, but we do expect them to do their best.
Some would consider this approach overbearing on our part - but it has worked for our family. This was part of the deal ahead of time that they’ve agreed to. Having respectful, intelligent children who generally value our advice and opinion has been a blessing.
We understand they won’t always take our advice, but we have great communication with them so that they understand why we have taken the approach we have, even if they will respectfully disagree with us at times. They have made plenty of financial decisions for themselves, and when somteimes different from our thoughts, we might ask them why, just to make sure they have thought things through.
I don’t think our pups look at us as having certain expectations when we share our limited funds, as a “club” at all.
But I could see where there are situations when the communication is not as good, that the withholding of finances could be seen as a weapon, especially if the child doesn’t want to admit that the communication is bad and both parties share some responsibility for it. Or if the parents haven’t been clear up front what the expectations should be, or how they should change as the child gains responsibility.
I was fortunate to have my own parents to turn to for advice for many years, well beyond college. My H lost his parents before we had children. But FIL taught him to seek advice from people you trust, who understand our interests, as it helps making decisions. We are proud our pups have learned this life lesson.
@perryd13, as the OP, I haven’t seen any follow-up from you on this thread, but I hope have had a chance to read through all of the comments here. Nobody is blaming you, and none of us understands your parent’s point of view either. From what little we have been able to read from your initial post, it should be clear to you that this topic is rather complicated, but the majority of us sincerely hope it gets better for you and your family.
@3puppies, THIS is using money as a weapon.
Hmmmm. OP appears to have disappeared.
Tiger parents probably read his post and deleted his account.
In my opinion, this is too intrusive. But every family is different.
@perryd13 - Sorry that your dad and stepmom are so controlling, but given that they ARE that way, my advice is to play by the rules until school is over. Just 3 more years, most of which you aren’t at home anyway. They would for sure pull all funding for your college if you make them mad. Once school is over and you are working, they don’t have any power over you at all. If for some reason they are rich and they hold inheritance money over your head, you can just decide that you won’t ever see any of it and just go make your own money. Unfortunately for you, this behavior on their part may have irreparably damaged your relationship. Only time will tell there. They are making a parenting mistake for sure.
EDIT: Just read your initial post again, and to me it sounds like they both might not want to be paying for your college and are setting it up so that YOU are the one responsible for having to leave college and stay at home and go to the Community College. I do realize we are getting just one side of the story here, but if you really are a responsible young adult college student, then their actions are totally out of bounds. One or both of them is/are really horrible.
The question, “What did you do before cell phones” is actually relevant because it helps to draw a parallel to the more primitive means of communication available when we parents were in school.
To my mind checking a kid’s online financial aid account or grades is like opening a letter from the FA office or registrar, technically illegal according to the US Postal Code, but perfectly permissible to my mind. Reading a kid’s texts is like reading a letter from their girlfriend or listening in on their phone conversations-way out of bounds unless there’s a damn good reason to be concerned, such as serious drug or other legal issues. Tracking a kid’s phone? How would parents here have reacted if when they were in college their parents had gotten in the car to follow them around town, spying on them?
This is what I would suggest:
Let them have access to your school grades account.
They will see how you did. What is your current GPA?
Now you are 18, I would change all your Social Media passwords. One could make an (weak) argument that when you were under 18 they needed to monitor, but now you are an adult.
Also if they ask you to see your phone, you can say “Dad, I am an adult. You don’t need to see my phone anymore.”
And delete whatever texts they have. At this point how are they going to punish you?
If your GPA is pretty good, then you can say "I understand you want to make sure I am doing well…I think next year you can stop monitoring so closely. "
If your GPA isn’t so good, then you need to figure out how to study differently (regardless of them)…be it going to the Writing Center, going to office hours, getting a tutor, forming a study group, doing extra problems, etc.
They are using the “we won’t pay” ultimatum on you.
You have a power too…your power is “I will just drop out”
But a nuclear arms race is not helpful.
“Dad, the constant threats of not funding college are not helping me. Please let me know now if you will or won’t pay for college. I am doing my best and you and step mom need to let me become indepenent. I will keep you informed and will continue to talk to you about how tests go, but the micromanaging isn’t helping or working.”