<p>When parents are paying sky-high tuition, how do you know your kid is not cutting classes (sleep in due to late night partying/hang out with friends...)?</p>
<p>You don’t until after the first semester and see the grades.</p>
<p>Often this is why parents have the kids “have some skin in the game.” </p>
<p>We had my daughter take out a loan ($5500) that we said we would pay back for her as long as she maintained a 3.0 or above avg. </p>
<p>Checking in from time to time, asking how classes are going, mentioning the Tutoring center and Professor office hours are good too.</p>
<p>My kid at college now has given me the password to the portal to see her grades. If I want to, I can check up on her academic status. I don’t do it very often (might look every couple of weeks), and rarely mention anything I see to her. She was fine with giving it to me (also allows me to see her schedule, and when I asked for that she said it would be easier to just give me the info than give me the schedule every semester). If your kid cuts many classes, likely their grades will show it. And if she can get a good grade without going to class, then I don’t really care if that is the case.</p>
<p>I don’t. I trust/trusted them to do what they needed to do.</p>
<p>You can’t know before those first semester grades come out, and some parents won’t know even then, either because they don’t see the kid’s grades or the class is set up so that students can perform well even if they do skip class. I would expect almost any freshman to skip a class or two.</p>
<p>It’s a huge leap of faith to send your kid off to college. Yes, it is very expensive, and there is some risk involved. If you discussed expectations ahead of time, and if your kid is partially responsible for paying for college, that may help keep him/her in class. But many kids have had clear parental expectations and financial responsibility and still skip class. It’s that adolescent brain.</p>
<p>I agree with your comments/suggestions. Here’s my 2 cents - technology comes to help. My kid has iPhone and MacBook, which all have Apple’s “Find iPhone” feature turn-on. I also have his class schedule as well. I check the Find iPhone app to see where he is (technically where his phone is), which I can tell whether he’s still in the dorm, or in cafeteria or in classroom (different buildings on Apple’s map) or someone else dorm. This app also shows when was the MacBook online, so I can see how late he stays up (past 1am this morning). This feature comes handy if any device was lost (heard first thing police will ask if you have this feature turn-on so they can track it).</p>
<p>Not sure how the Android world works.</p>
<p>What is with so many parents wanting to stalk their adult children? It’s so creepy. </p>
<p>I don’t know…We do have him share his grades with us at the end of the semester…since we are paying, that’s part of the deal. I have absolutely no desire to stalk my kid while he’s at school…it’s actually very liberating as a parent to not have to worry about his whereabouts like I do when he is under our roof…</p>
<p>They are adults (legally), they make decisions and they receive the concomitant results. That is a far more crucial part of their educations – pervasive throughout life – than History 201 or Geology 410. There’s nothing wrong with a “financial contract” approach, IF the parent is actually willing to adhere to the pre-established rules forever (i.e., no debt forgiveness upon graduation, etc.). Kids need to grow up (and so do some parents).</p>
<p>Incidentally, what do you do if the student’s reply to your cutting class criticisms essentially is, “it’s my life, I’m over 18, and you have no decision-making authority.”? Obviously, you can cease providing financial support; however, are you really willing to mitigate substantially your child’s lifelong future by likely precluding their undergraduate education? </p>
<p>I don’t have a problem if they are paying their own tuition, room-board, … until then too bad.</p>
<p>It just like an investment, you want to like to make sure your broker is wisely “investing” your money, not just blow them off…</p>
<p>If you think your child is a “bad investment” then don’t invest. Don’t stalk them though. </p>
<p>Hey, our parents didn’t know either, remember? I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse. </p>
<p>I think you have to trust them to make the right decisions at this point. </p>
<p>“What is with so many parents wanting to stalk their adult children? It’s so creepy.”</p>
<p>THIS!!! </p>
<p>I cannot imagine tracking my adult child! If one thinks they must do that, either they have no trust in their kids ability to handle college, or their kid is truly untrustworthy and shouldn’t have been allowed to go away to school in the first place. </p>
<p>Wow, that iphone thing is really something else. I wonder how many parents are doing that. I have a friend whose daughter somehow synced her texts to her mother’s ipad. The girl was actually squeeky clean and mom got bored of reading her texts.</p>
<p>Wow! I don’t know or care if my kid is going to class. All I care about is the final grade (passing). If he can pass without ever going to class (which I doubt) then that is his decision to make. I trust my kids to make good decisions. Maybe I’m just really laid back, but skipping classes is just not something I ever worried about. </p>
<p>I have heard about parents who actually call their kid every morning to wake them up. I haven’t woken up my kid since they were in grade school. Alarm clocks are marvellous inventions! (or iphones for the younger generation!)</p>
<p>"This app also shows when was the MacBook online, so I can see how late he stays up (past 1am this morning). "</p>
<p>Why stop there, you could always add a program to check to see what he was doing on the computer till 1 am…</p>
<p>Does your son know that you are tracking his every move?</p>
<p>Oh pishposh Romani. Come on now, being curious about our kids performance is not some kind of oddball obsession. Yes, I imagine that some insecure parents take it too far. I’m with Inparent, who seems to have found a reasonable balance.</p>
<p>There’s really no way to tell, even if your kid stays home and commutes to college, whether they are cutting classes or not. If you’re paying (or even just helping to to pay) it’s fair to ask that you get to see their grades.</p>
<p>Being “curious about our kids performance” is a FAR CRY from stalking their whereabouts using computer technology. I don’t think Romani said anything which could be remotely interpreted that parents don’t have a right to be “curious” about performance. For parents who are mildly curious, there is that thing called semester grade report.</p>
<p>You can stalk, you can nag, you can read your kids emails and check his grades online… but you still can’t make him go to class or pay attention to what’s going on IN class.</p>
<p>Either your kid has decided to participate in this grand, expensive spectacle called “Higher Education” or not. If your kid is at college and is not giving it his all, you will find out at the end of the semester. Nagging now- in what, the third week of classes- before you even know that there’s a problem, to me suggests that your kid will spend the time he should be spending learning about primate anthropology or reading Camus to figuring out a way to trick you into thinking he’s in the library when he’s actually playing beer pong.</p>
<p>Discussions around parental expectations are perfectly reasonable. cyberstalking your kids seems over the line to me.</p>