<p><a href=“http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6237364/ns/health-health_care/t/fda-approves-computer-chip-humans/#.VA8_CyhZ2Dc”>http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6237364/ns/health-health_care/t/fda-approves-computer-chip-humans/#.VA8_CyhZ2Dc</a></p>
<p>Can you imagine getting a text from your husband “Step away from the Lancôme counter.” lol</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Um…I can definitely see the kids having fun with this. “Here, take my Macbook for awhile, will you? Next week, Sam, you can have it.” “Joy! Want to use my Macbook for the day? Just take it around when you go. thanks!”</p>
<p>Parents are never as clever as they think they are.</p>
<p>Regarding the importance of attendance–D’s college has a strict attendance policy. All classes are seminar-sized and discussion-based, and the administration believes that one student’s absence affects the learning opportunities not only for the absent student, but for all the student’s in the class. I had never thought about it this way, but I like that the policy assumes a certain high regard for each student’s participation.</p>
<p>Check it out for the college your student is attending.</p>
<p>Where I teach, you MUST go to classes freshman year, but some do not take attendance. Professors depend on remembering students, so it is wise to meet the professor. Junior year and later, attendance is optional but it can be in the syllabus.</p>
<p>Also, I believe some if not most colleges have to keep track of all students, because FA will be lost if the student stops attending. </p>
<p>(if you are truly worried about this, I am not sure why you would spend tons of money to send your child to college in the first place - better to send them to a CC if you have any worries)</p>
<p><a href=“if%20you%20are%20truly%20worried%20about%20this,%20I%20am%20not%20sure%20why%20you%20would%20spend%20tons%20of%20money%20to%20send%20your%20child%20to%20college%20in%20the%20first%20place%20-%20better%20to%20send%20them%20to%20a%20CC%20if%20you%20have%20any%20worries”>quote</a>
[/quote]
Indeed, you could send him to a community college, and register for the same classes yourself. Then you could verify not only that he is there, but that he appears to be paying attention. You’d also know first hand what all the homework assignments were. And you wouldn’t need electronic surveillance.</p>
<p>I was ready for a break from knowing their every move when they went to college. Mine all tend to be over-sharers, though. First few weeks of first term, one kid called in a panic to tell me he had overslept and class had already started. I told him to go late. Friend over having coffee laughed so hard she almost spit it all out. That kid asked me to please call him on exam days to be sure he was awake. I obliged. Happy to report he finished school and manages to make it to work on time without my help. </p>
<p>@Felicita Sharing the semester grade reports was the deal for us, too. We weren’t going to babysit or monitor their day to day comings and goings, expenses, etc. But one of the very few must-do’s that we had was that we see the grades each semester. The only other “demand” was our clear expectation that they would graduate in 4 years. We put up a ton of money to support them, and told them they could major in anything they wanted to and take any course they wanted to, but absent a medical emergency or something like that we weren’t going to pay for more than 4 years in college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is there even such a thing as a “men’s corridor” any more? </p>
<p>My middle schooler told me that yesterday, she walked into the boys gym locker room by mistake, and didn’t realize it. It took a few minutes for an adult supervising to ask her to leave. Didn’t see anything though :)</p>
<p>Do the math and tell them how much each minute is costing, whether they are sleeping, on the can, in class or hanging with their friends. </p>
<p>
Yes, our finaid director has been quite insistent on this. But for finaid purposes, it can be kind of loose. Like, if you collect homework every week-10 days, you can use the date of the last assignment received as the last date of attendance. That doesn’t work in a class with only midterm and final.</p>
<p>I personally take daily attendance because my school policy allows me to withdraw students when they’ve missed 10%, and I almost always do that.</p>
<p>@alh, I’m chuckling because that would be my older D, oversharing and all.</p>
<p>As for the OP, tracking, chips, Big Data and all that, it is freaking me the heck out!</p>
<p>My D’s school does not track attendance. However, it probably would not be wise to not attend classes, especially the smaller sized ones.</p>
<p>I have told this story before on another post. My parents did not monitor my progress in college. My dad told me he would be in the audience on May xx, 1982 and that I better be walking across the stage getting a diploma. He could care less how I got there and if it was okay with the school, it was okay with him. He was not condoning cheating, lying or anything like that. And while he may have been exaggerating, they never saw my grades once in 4 years. And yes, I did walk on time.</p>
<p>Now my D goes to the same school as a freshman. These are different times and I may ask her what her semester grades are. I have no intention of monitoring her day to day while she is at school though. That level of scrutiny would be very unwelcome, even from my usually compliant child. </p>
<p>The cyberstalking with Find My iphone is helicopter parenting at its worst. If a kid is never going to class–especially a freshman–there’s a problem. I would be inclined to let the kid learn the hard way–suffer the consequences rather than being a cybercop.</p>
<p>I have a friend who spied on her kid using the iphone app when she was doing study abroad. After finishing her studies, she traveled a bit, including to another country to see an ex-boyfriend. My friend tracked when she finally got to the ex-boyfriend’s apartment … and then reported that she never left the apartment for 18 hours. Uh, TMI for me, but it was pretty funny. The kid would be mortified, of course. As much as I’d love to know where they are every moment of the day, I couldn’t do that to my kids. Just wrong.</p>
<p>I agree. Nice <em>not</em> to know where they are every minute, but if you’re paying for it then grades matter and you have a right to know if your “investment” is paying off. Not to say that there’s no “room for error.” There needs to be, but still … I’m hoping mine raise any red flags early to there’s time make adjustments, but I’m a realist as well. This is largely uncharted territory.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>REALLY?</p>
<p>To answer the OP’s question: You have to trust your child. He should be prepared to succeed in school because he wants to be successful. You have to let go long before your child leaves for college. Ideally, you should gradually loosen your grip on your child starting in middle school. By junior year in high school you should be done monitoring homework, bedtime, etc. If you can’t do this by the time your child is college aged then your child does not belong in college yet.</p>
<p>@andorvw Be aware that you have posted enough personal information on various threads so that it wouldn’t be too difficult for a Brown student to hunt down your son and embarrass the heck out of him. If the cell phone suddenly stops moving or starts showing up in bizarre places for a couple days, you’ll know that he’s on to you!</p>
<p>“Where’s she going now? What! Coffee again? Hey! That’s a men’s corridor!”
Is there even such a thing as a “men’s corridor” any more?</p>
<p>Yes, at Baylor University! Some of the men’s and women’s halls have “visiting hours.”</p>