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<p>It’s not that maybe he doesn’t have the time, it’s maybe he doesn’t want to talk every week. Is it so bad that a college student doesn’t want to talk to their parents every week? Not at all.</p>
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<p>May that be the worst you ever have to deal with regarding your family.</p>
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<p>Bingo! I didn’t think of it that way, but that statement totally makes sense. If a parents pays for college, it’s because they WANT to pay for it, not because they HAVE to pay for it. And they really shouldn’t expect anything in return.</p>
<p>I help my friends and give them things quite frequently I don’t expect ANYTHING in return from them. If we went around and expected something in return from everybody that we helped (either tangible or intangibly), we wouldn’t have time to do anything else.</p>
<p>music…if a student wants to be treated as the emerging adult that he is, then he needs to act like an adult and not a child. </p>
<p>An adult considers the feelings of others, instead of only his own feelings.</p>
<p>As an adult, he should consider the fact that his parents’ lives are changing as much as his. A person of college age is old enough to learn that it’s not always all about him.</p>
<p>It isn’t a huge amount of effort to call once a week for a few minutes while walking across campus, or doing laundry, or waiting for a shuttle.</p>
<p>It looks like we’ll talk once a week, on Sundays but we tell him ever time he’s free to call whenever, I did text him a couple times, once to tell him to have a great first day, the next about packages. Something for kids… I talk to my mom just about every day. I own a business, am married, have kids and responsibilities. My mom is a widow and we are the light of her life. 15 minutes a day is no biggie to me to keep her feeling involved in my life. It doesn’t matter if she has much to say, she wants to hear about my business, what the kids are up to, what I’m making for dinner and even the news, friends and family, etc. No one loves you like your mom. Sometimes you do things for other people just because it’s a nice considerate thing to do.</p>
<p>I agree with NJSue, and I also applaud the fact that the OP doesn’t want to harm or ruin the relationship. The kid also has the power to harm or ruin the relationship, at this age. It’s sad to be left as a parent thinking that there’s no natural desire to keep in touch and share some news about this exciting and very expensive venture. And no concern on the kid’s part about how the family is doing. You want to know that he’s OK. He should also want to know that you’re OK.</p>
<p>My gut reaction is that I would let him do whatever he wants this semester, and hopefully he’ll grow up a bit and begin to appreciate his family a little more. If not, over Christmas break, I’d tell him it’s a little weird and disappointing, and talk about mutual expectations and boundaries for spring semester. YMMV.</p>
<p>When I was a kid, my dad phoned his mother to touch base every Sunday (more often if there was some reason), so I just accepted that as a common-sense practice when I went away to school. It seemed to be a pretty common practice.</p>
<p>Apropos of some of the comments above, when this young man graduates, does he expect to have a job where he never talks to his boss if he doesn’t feel like it? It’s nice to give freely to friends, and no, normal people don’t keep score. But people don’t give decades of full support and a college education to friends. People don’t make life-changing compromises and sacrifices for anybody but their kids, really. The kids are expected to pay it forward, not back, it’s true – but to be left feeling used, unwanted, ignored is a slap in the face at any age.</p>
<p>A mature and healthy adult recognizes and fulfills certain basic social and familial responsibilities.</p>
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I love this!</p>
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<p>Like GladGradDad state is totally true: “We live in a time now of instant communications and veritable spewing of information with email, text, IM, facebook, Skype, etc. and IMO this can be very invasive to privacy and independence. I think it also leads to expectations that those instant and frequent communications will occur even if one party or the other doesn’t want to be in ‘constant contact’. It might even have the backlash of decreasing the contact even more”. </p>
<p>I don’t use texting. Never have, never well. I don’t keep my cell phone on. I don’t like constant communication with people. It’s annoying.</p>
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<p>You’re missing the whole point. It’s not about money or the value. You should never keep score or expect anything back from the person whether you give 4 years of full tuition or a gift card to a restaurant. Parents should have kids because they WANT to have kids, not because they HAVE to have kids. It’s the law to provide support to your children for 18 years (i.e. food, shelter).</p>
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<p>Your parents are not your boss.</p>
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<p>Nobody can choose how others feel. Maybe the son feels he is connecting with his parents enough? Maybe the parents are making a big deal about nothing? We have no clue.</p>
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<p>Some people don’t like sharing news if they don’t think it’s important. How do you know the son doesn’t have concern about the family?</p>
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<p>No, but if you love someone, you care about their feelings. You find yourself making small gestures that don’t really take up that much time or energy but which make the person you love feel much better. The OP has said that she is concerned about the lack of contact with her son. Many of the parents here can see her point. </p>
<p>This isn’t really about independence; it’s about adult children understanding that they should no longer feel entitled to ignore their loved ones’ feelings because it is inconvenient. If the young adult in question cannot understand that, then he has a lot of growing up to do.</p>
<p>Now if the parent is calling twenty times a day and basically harassing the student, I would never support that. And in fact, I actually do think that many kids and parents are too linked today. You do not need to call your parents about every little thing. But to cut all ties and never speak except when you want money is very harsh and terrible for a parent to endure.</p>
<p>^ trust me. Having just been through Hurricane Isaac, even a natural disaster doesn’t always get them to keep in better touch :(</p>
<p>I think the monetary support of college and the expectation of contact should be separated and not dependent on each other.</p>
<p>Look at it this way, if he was on a full scholarship, or paid for college fully himself via loans and work, or didn’t go to college but rather, had a job and supported himself, wouldn’t you want to hear from him just as much as you do now? Given that, forget about the financial support you’re giving being a factor or having this particular string attached, this is really about your S communicating with you - or not.</p>
<p>I want to hear from my kids as much as the next guy but I want that communication to be mutual. I don’t want to force myself on them. I want them to WANT to communicate with me. That doesn’t mean I won’t drop a few suggestions or express my opinion that I’d like to hear from them occasionally, but really, they need to want to communicate. If they don’t WANT to communicate then it’s indicative of some issues. These issues might be simply logistical in that our schedules conflict, they might be because I was nagging, complaining, trying to tell the kid what to do (when they don’t want or need parental direction at this point) when I communicated with them the last few times, it could even be that the kid is self-centered and rude to his parents, or maybe it’s just the dynamic between the kid and me for some reason - i.e. not something new since going to college whether I realized it or not.</p>
<p>Regardless, it’s only a week or so into the year so now’s no time to get too worked up over this. See how it settles out. If there’s still minimal contact after a few weeks then discuss it but be open to trying to understand WHY he doesn’t communicate more often. Don’t expect this to be 100% mutual - i.e. that he’d want to contact you as frequently as you’d like to contact him, it generally doesn’t work that way since the kid at this point is usually getting busy with their own lives and starting to exert more and more independence (while we parents wish to live somewhat vicariously through the kid which can put pressure on them).</p>
<p>Note - I’ve been lucky in this regard - both of my kids contact me at acceptable levels although it’s not as frequently as I’d like but that’s because I’m the parent looking at it from a parent’s perspective and desires. I also go out of my way to not initiate the contact with them too much so as to give them the independence yet I also tell them explicitly that’s what I’m doing and that I welcome hearing from them anytime. I also let them know that I ‘do’ live somewhat vicariously through them and am interested in what they’re up to so they can know that I do want to hear from them and find what they’re doing interesting.</p>
<p>There is something disturbing to me about the notion that kids, and the money we pay out for their care (which includes college), are an investment that must be paid off with certain grades, a good job, a certain number of phone calls, etc. Music222 has it right-we have kids because we WANT to, not so they can “pay it forward” and return our investment in them. We send them to college because we WANT to, so that they will have good lives, not because we’re investing in them. We talk to them because we WANT to, not because there’s a schedule on the fridge.</p>
<p>When most of us were in school we were lucky to get near a pay phone with enough quarters to call home once every few weeks. Heck, we were lucky to hear from our parents even in emergencies! </p>
<p>The idea that our kids MUST respond on a computer-like schedule or suffer our wrath is just bizarre. I talked to my mom often once I was an adult, when I lived in her city and when I moved far away. But not “on schedule”. Sometimes she called me, and my grandmother never did get the time zones right and often called at 3 a.m. SO WHAT? It was the connection that mattered.</p>
<p>As one who’s been down the road of kids growing up and leaving home-they need a little space to figure out who they are. When they do, they’ll call. Or text. Or email. And things will be fine. Unless you want to bill them for services rendered and take their phones away. Sheesh.</p>
<p>If I was paying the entire bill and DS/DD did this to me, he/she would be on the next bus back home and on the way to community college. Since kids on full parental ride fail the adulthood Turing test (let’s see who gets this) the parents have every right and expectation to helicopter in and out at will. Don’t like it, tough.</p>
<p>I don’t expect live cam of his/her college lectures but with technology being what it is, the cost of calls is nearly free and time can be found between classes or in many other opportune times. </p>
<p>There’s no such thing as ‘could not be bothered’ to call back. Not on a full parental ride at least. If said kid went to night school while digging ditches in the day, it’s another story…</p>
<p>At DD1’s school, the scholarship office has omnipotent powers and requires things like ‘supervised studying’ (no kidding, you have to swipe your ID in many supervised (by TA’s, grouped by subject) study times, study groups, monthly progress meetings, and many many more such things.</p>
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<p>Where did the OP state her son does that?</p>
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<p>But sometimes people make a big deal about nothing.</p>
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<p>So what would happen if you kid for a full scholarship?</p>
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<p>100% agree. I call when I call. Sometimes it’s one a week, sometimes it’s every two weeks, sometimes it’s every five days. There should never be a schedule set out.</p>
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<p>is it possible the people involved are different personality types, and that is creating this issue?</p>
<p>like DiSC or Meyers Briggs? different people prioritize different things.</p>