<p>My father opened one of my letters, and it was kind of an annoying moment. We’d recently visited American University and he knew that I was anxious to hear back from them. When I came home from school he gave the letter to me and apologized for opening it. I don’t entirely remember what he said; I think he was just curious about it. On one hand, I’m happy that he cared enough about that to want to find out about it, but on the other hand I really wish that he’d let me open it for myself. Afterward he asked if I wanted him to open any others, and I’m happy that he did ask because it gave me a chance to explain why I’d been bothered by it.</p>
<p>In my opinion, it was really ****ty of the OP’s mother to throw the envelope away like that. Opening it is one thing, but not even letting them see it is preposterous. People should be allowed to have their closure.</p>
<p>I remember my daughter getting a letter from her dream school a month before decisions were supposed to come out. It seemed odd, and I was holding it up to the light to get any glimpse. I saw a map, that would be good right. They wouldn’t reject someone and send a map.</p>
<p>It did throw the envelope at her as soon as she walked in the door from school. And yes, it was a admitted student day special event.</p>
<p>suggestion to any student who is reading this and whose parents open their college mail … politely and respectively ask them to read this thread … maybe reading the input from so many parents will pursaude them to not open your mail</p>
<p>I think it’s annoying… yesterday, my mom opened my Kenyon acceptance letter to see how much merit $ I would get, if any. Although I didn’t make a big deal out of it, I was irritating; I filled out the app, I wanted to open the letter!</p>
<p>Hopefully the parent and child would have discussed this ahead of time and whatever reasons or objections there may be would have been settled well before the envelope was torn. </p>
<p>For us, DS doesn’t like us opening his mail except when he specifically asks for us to watch for such-and-such, whereas DDs want us to triage and pass on only things that they feel are useful.</p>
<p>I’m curious; any chance this is something that bothers girls more than guys? I ask because I open all the college mail here, good news or bad, but it’s at son’s request. It started with the emails, I received a phone call from GC asking me to be sure and remind son to come by her office and pick up information to help him prepare for an interview, and I asked what interview? She said son should have received an interview invitation from a college rep that was visiting the school and sure enough when I checked son’s email, there it was, showing it had been read. So I asked son about it, turns out he gets annoyed by the little app (which he downloaded) that shows in the corner of the screen and periodically reminds him that he has x number of unread email if he’s in the middle, so in order to keep that from popping up in the middle of a game, he goes through and clicks on all the emails so that the app thinks they have been opened, but doesn’t actually read the email. Then when I look, I think all the emails have been read so I don’t go any further. He was able to schedule a different interview time (and was accepted so it didn’t hurt him too much) and I explained that he couldn’t do that, both GC and mom would kill him (lol), so he asks me to triage his email for important college stuff. The only thing he asked was not to read his facebook messages, so I don’t.
We do the same with mail; I open all the college mail even when he’s the one that stops at the mailbox as he heads down the driveway. Many times he leaves the mail in his truck for a couple of days, until I happen to ask if there is mail and he say’s “Oh, I forgot it’s in my truck”. Sometimes we open it together, if it’s one he’s been waiting on and I’m home during the day, I’ll text him, but he always says open it. So after I read this thread I asked him if he was sure (because I really don’t have a problem with doing it either way) and he said really he didn’t care, if it turned out to be bad news, at least I already knew and he didn’t have to tell me and if it was good news, I can text and let him now sooner than he would find out. Also as he mentioned, he hates paperwork and this college process has created tons. It’s not that he isn’t interested, he is very laid back, and not much ever gets to him.
It might also have something to do with the fact that at the beginning of the senior year, both the upper school head and GC meet with the senior parents and tell them; no matter how irritated you get w/your kid, no matter how much you just want to say “fine, just do it all yourself, if you’re so grown-up”, to resist that temptation, this is too important to take a hands-off approach. They tell the kids the same thing, keep your parents in the loop and listen to them from time to time. For those few students we have every year that just refuse to involve their parents or whose parents refuse to get involved the GC more or less steps in and fills the role.
But this thread made me think and son is still waiting for a few more end of March, 1st of April decisions so I think I may just leave them for him to open, just to make sure he’s not missing out on the excitement.</p>