<p>I would welcome a call from my son’s roommate’s parents, but he would probably not like it if I was the one doing the calling.</p>
<p>I think it was a lovely gesture and I am glad to hear it was your daughter that thought it was weird - I was thinking her roommates parents were pretty rude!</p>
<p>If the roommates parents don’t respond - so be it! At least you offered. </p>
<p>I am lucky to be close to my son and his friends. They don’t seem to mind being around me occasionally and in fact, they suggested that I be facebook friends with them in order to keep up. I agree that our college kids need to have their own life but I think what the OP did was perfectly fine. </p>
<p>BTW - I am southern and my son graduated from a HS with ±3000 students.</p>
<p>As a mom who just dropped her child off 3000 miles from home I would have been so thankful for a phone call from you! I am very hopeful my daughter finds friends to go home with on long weekends and maybe a family of two she could call if a medical or dental emergency arose.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that the daughter’s reaction in this case doesn’t mean that she’s not close to the mother. She’s just trying to assert her own “ownership” of the situation – which is that she and her roommate are the ones who have to live together, work things out, etc. and that parents are tangential to that. Boundaries don’t preclude closeness.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I certainly did not mean that the OP and her daughter were not close. I can understand the daughter saying it was ‘weird’ that her mom contacted her roommates parents! I was trying to say that just because your kids go off to college doesn’t mean you can’t stay close with your kids (and their friends!).</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is saying that kids and parents should lead separate lives. I think what has been suggested is that above all the OP needs to be concerned with how her daughter views this. The OP mentioned this on the 2015 parents thread where I brought up the point that her daughter is struggling with being ‘away at school’ 20min from home. She doesn’t want to be a hometown kid. Very often ‘townies’ are not treated the same. She wants to establish herself on the same basis as every other student living on campus. This very likely led to her reaction. As soon as she sees that mom isn’t going to be showing up uninvited she will probably lighten up. As others have told me throughout this process, be gentle on yourself.</p>
<p>The OP now realizes that waiting until move in or presenting the invitation through her daughter would have been a better option. Everyone can move on. Yes, extending these assurances to parents who are further away is very kind and often appreciated by the other parents. It’s done a lot. The primary relationship is between the students however and should always be respected.</p>
<p>I have been wanting to contact my D1’s roomie’s parents all summer. They will be 8 hrs away and we are 3 1/2. But now reading this post I am not so sure. I really am trying not to be the helicopter parent. We have been very close but I do want her to grow up and learn to meet people on her own. She is very shy and she is the one who is extremely worried about leaving home and going away to college. So, based on her concerns I have concerns too. With all that said, I hope to meet the roommates family during Move-in and introduce myself and provide phone numbers for emergencies but then I will leave it at that at the wonderful suggestions provided by all of you.</p>
<p>@ lammb66 - We are 90 from school while DS2’s roommate is 16hrs from home. We extended our information and help through our son. We didn’t meet the roommate’s parents at move-in as they couldn’t make the trip…his mom’s a teacher so timing was bad. After move in his mom did call us to thank us for some help we had offered in picking up some items in the college town for her son. At that point the boys had met, etc. I think as long as you try to keep initial communication through your student and really respect their wishes you will be fine. At move in it’s perfectly fine to exchange information IMO.</p>
<p>I see absolutely NOTHING wrong with making that call. Our kids will all react with eyerolls anytime we do ANYthing that exhibits even a tiny amount of concern for them. It’s natural. Stop worrying. If I was the other mom that had recieved that call, I’d have been very thankful for such a thoughtful roommate’s mom! I met my son’s roomies parents this past weekend, at move-in. (My son’s roomie is a HS friend, but not a really close one - I had not met the parents before.) And I think for either of us, such a call would have been very much appreciated if we had been in the OP’s situation.</p>
<p>Great intentions, but most kids would have seen the loving gesture as invasive.</p>
<p>my son might have rolled his eys…but wouldnt have thought it was “invasive” …just “mom” doing her usual jerky thing…wouldnt have felt it reflected on him in any way. and it still think it was a nice thing to do…</p>
<p>btw what did the roomie’s parents think of it…did they seem pleased or upset?</p>
<p>My daughter’s best friend/apartmentmate and her family live less than 20 miles from our house (school is 2 1/2 hours away). We’ve never met her parents in the three years they’ve been in school together.</p>
<p>I helped the best friend get a summer job at the end of their freshman year, as she needed a job that helped her get the 500 hours of medical work that the girls both needed for their major and I moonlight for a healthcare agency. Her dad has a pick-up truck and helped my daughter move from the dorm she was in last year to the apartment they shared this summer. The girls appreciate all of us, but are happier keeping us separate!</p>
<p>On move in day, we parents exchanged cell phone numbers. I even got one of my son’s two roommates’ numbers. I wouldn’t use them except in case of emergency, but it is nice to know I have them.</p>
<p>I hope this doesn’t sound too lame, but I felt sad that <em>I</em> didn’t get the imagined sendoff I thought I would have dropping ds off. Neither dh nor I ever lived in a dorm, and I began to realize I had built up in my mind what dropoff would be like – we’d get to meet the other set of parents, become fast friends, go out to lunch that day and exchange e-mails through the year of funny things we’d heard about the other’s ds. NOT. Ds’s roommate was an intl so he arrived a week before ds did. No parents anywhere to be found, and forget taking him out to lunch. He skedaddled the second we arrived, and I don’t think I ever saw him again.</p>
<p>Sending your first off to college is a big deal. Sometimes we have our own romantic notions of how it’ll go. I agree with everyone who said that we see it as a lovely gesture but respecting your dd is the primary thing at this point. Still, what’s done is done. Don’t beat yourself up about it. She’ll get over it.</p>
<p>Heck, we have the In Loco Parentis thread here. It is comforting to know that there is someone close to our kids in the unlikely event that they will be needed.</p>
<p>I see nothing wrong with sending contact information to the parent of a far-from-home student. This is between the parents and if your student doesn’t like it, I bet it is not the first time this has happened! It is a gracious and generous gesture.</p>
<p>Both my son and his roommate came from many miles away. The moms exchanged email and phone numbers. This was only used once, when the 2 roommates went out of the country for spring break and son’s roommate did not take a computer or contact his parents at all. The other mom emailed after several days to see if I had heard from my son to know that the boys (freshmen) were OK. I had, and I know that it was a comfort to her.</p>
<p>Yea, my kids are very clear with us that THEY want to take the lead on all things with their college related stuff. They will often choose to delegate things they find too challenging (e.g. insurance waivers, dealing with cashier/bursar, etc.)</p>
<p>D likes to keep her friends separate. There are those she knows from HS, those she knows from work, and some that she knows from her major. She relishes each of her friends but really enjoys things more this way. She was happy we offered to take her & new room mates grocery shopping when she 1st moved in. When we went up for parents’ weekend, she was happy we took her & HS friends to dinner so she could grill them about what to do & not do when she enrolled in January. She never wanted us to take her room mates out.</p>
<p>S was happy to have us take out his room mate and another friend once when we were visiting. I believe he has also eaten with his room mate’s parents when they came to town. They rented a large vehicle & helped the boys move into their apartment. Don’t believe I ever got their contact info nor his room mate’s but D knew how to reach the room mate in case of emergency. We never contacted him.</p>
<p>It does make our kids happy for THEM to take the lead in relationships involving their school, living arrangements & relatives of those they know. It works for us.</p>
<p>Parent of a recent college grad and current college soph here.</p>
<p>Freshman parents - I suggest waiting until move-in day and meeting the parents then. It will be much more natural to exchange contact info (email & phone#) if both parents want to do so at that point.</p>
<p>For the OP - I totally get why you did it, and as the far-away parent I would have appreciated it. I also know my daughter would have been ticked. I wouldn’t feel too bad about it, just be more mindful of her feelings in the future. And yes, throw out the “You’re an independent adult” card the next time she wants money for clothes or to replace something she shouldn’t have lost!</p>
<p>More important than having the other parent’s contact info, though, is getting the roommate’s cell phone number. I always asked for it on move-in day, for EMERGENCY purposes ONLY. So far, with 5 years of college under our belts (between 2 kids), I’ve never had to use it. But my S and his roommate even agreed that was a good idea the year they lived in the fraternity house and didn’t have an RA. The important thing, though, is to ONLY use it if you truly need to contact your child and cannot reach him. Do NOT call the roommate to complain or fight your kids’ battles for them, or to ask favors.</p>
<p>agreed^^ I always had our kid’s RM’s contact info. I never had to use it.</p>
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<p>This sounds like a perfect scenario to me. Apparently, this is not how most people think based on the responses to the OP. What the OP did was a kind gesture and something that I would have welcomed. It seems like most parents are defending the daughter’s response which I don’t understand. If it were my daughter, I would scold her for giving me the business when I was only trying to be helpful.</p>
<p>By the time our kids go to college, I would think that most of us had become accustomed to the eye rolling!</p>
<p>Mine has become more tolerant of me over time. </p>
<p>As long as your actions are simply kind and not intrusive, I’d say go for it, tell the kid that this is what nice people do, and then forget about it.</p>