<p>My friends were quite independent, but they still spoke with their parents regularly. We all wrote to our parents via slow mail too. My parents were very practical, so they didn’t send me any care packages, but my white friends got them often. I had many male friends, they also spoke with their parens. I don’t think any of them were mentally ill or particularly needy.</p>
<h1>15: funny!</h1>
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<p>This guy drops out after one semester — no refund for his parents. Shocking. What an idiot. How dare he spread his wings. Explore his world on his own. Take a risk. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.</p>
<p>I think letting your kids follow the path of Steve Jobs is like thinking you’ll win the lottery.</p>
<p>Also, if Steve Jobs did LSD, why don’t you do it too?</p>
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<p>I know many “successful” people who did indeed do LSD back in the day: scientists, dentists, engineers, actuaries, financial pros, nurses, professors, pr execs, et al.</p>
<p>I would certainly agree that expecting your kid to be the next Steve Jobs because s/he drops out of school and engages in various forms of exploration is foolish. On the other hand, expecting your kid to be the next Steve Jobs because s/he keeps her nose to the grindstone in some form of “engineering” is equally foolish.</p>
<p>The problem with this kid originally was not that he took off on a little trip, but that he failed to respond to calls from his family in the manner to which they were accustomed. I would venture to guess that if he had simply called them back or sent them an email all of this hysteria would have been avoided. What he did was the equivalent of going to Woodstock or a march on Washington. I recall going to Washington for several days on at least one occasion, and I doubt that I told my parents. I, for one, fully sympathize with his desire to have “been there”–at least for a few days–at what may turn out to be one of the seminal events of his generation. What is new is the expectation of parents that their college-age kids will be in constant communication.</p>
<p>If I reported my S as missing every time I didn’t hear from him for 3 weeks and it took me a number of tries to get a callback, I’d be making a permanent nest in the ear of the local police. S has me well-trained re lowered expectations, so that when he DOES respond promptly I am pleasantly surprised. :)</p>
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<p>I am pro Steve Jobs but it is an unfair comparison. In today’s technology driven world (Thank you Mr. jobs) and instant communication, failure to be able to get in touch with a kid for close to a week will raise a red flag if that is the expectation. And I am half way through the Jobs’ biography right now and even though he educated himself uniquely, I never recall any references to his frequency of contact with his parents. Maybe his parents expected no contact or relative little contact and what this whole thread was about was failure to meet communication expectations.</p>
<p>So I guess it begs the question, if you tried to call your child for a week or two and were not successful, would you just sit back and say my kid must me spreading his wings and exploring his world therefore I will just chill and wait for his/her call?</p>
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<p>I didn’t know anyone who spoke to their parents once a week when I was in college. It would have been a long distance call. I was working my way through college, with some minimal assistance (what they could afford) from my parents. Neither of us had the funds to be making once a week long distance phone calls. Perhaps it is a difference of location or culture, but where I lived, going to college was viewed as absolutely the time to grow up and separate from parents. Once a week calls would have been viewed by most people I knew as excessive with respect to achieving that goal of becoming an independent adult. </p>
<p>However, if my parents had needed to contact me and I didn’t answer the phone (no answering machines, voice mail, or cell phones) within a few days or respond to an emergency call to my dorm, there would certainly have been trouble. I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking off from school to take part in a protest, no matter that it was some kind of seminal event . I felt so fortunate to be the first in my entire family to go off to college rather than living at home and attending either CC or the local commuter university that I would have viewed such an act as extremely ungrateful, as well as disrespectful and thoughtless.</p>
<p>All that said, now is not then. With cell phones and computers, it is so easy to contact someone. When I was growing up, if your parents (or anyone for that matter) called you and you were not in your dorm or apartment, they would have to try again later. It actually could take a while to connect. Not the case anymore. Not returning a text or a voice mail asking if you are alive and well would be one of the more inconsiderate acts I could imagine from my DD. If my child doesn’t want to talk often because she is trying to gain independence, that’s one thing. Ignoring calls or texts which contain parental or familial worry about the student’s safety is another matter entirely.</p>
<p>I don’t completely understand the article. It says the way they found him was through a credit card purchase and he responded to a text message.</p>
<p>First, they make a big deal about how he left with only $40. But if he also had a credit card. That hardly makes him a pioneeering pilgrim living on his wits.</p>
<p>And did he have a cell phone? Was he just not replying to calls and texts until his uncle texted him, or did they not even try before that?</p>
<p>Of course, I did worse things when I was in college for less idealistic reasons. Even when I was in high school I took off a few times without telling anyone. I’m surprised my parents survived it.</p>
<p>Edit: Never mind on point 2. It helps to read the first paragraph of the article :)</p>
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<p>Fortunately, dad had my back on that one. Everytime some older aunts/mother wanted to call me as incessantly as they did with my older cousins, my father would cite two things:</p>
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<li><p>How those incessant calls caused a few older cousins to flunk out of grad programs because they became too much of a distraction from their studies. It was also a reason why my parents ran interference to minimize the “emergency calls” to the absolute minimum. </p></li>
<li><p>If all the male members of the family can survive months without family contact while doing their mandatory 2 years of military service in the home country…it’s doubtful I’d crumble from infrequent parental/older relation contact in a much cushier dorm at a private LAC. </p></li>
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<p>Factor in long distance costs and the fact my parents both knew I don’t really care for talking on the phone so calling every 2-3 weeks was well within reason. </p>
<p>Moreover, I also wrote snail mail and email letters at random intervals if I felt I had something meaningful to say. While those could be more infrequent…each letter tended to be 2-5 pages. </p>
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<p>I think that may be a product of increasing parental contact/sheltering expected in this generation of college parents. </p>
<p>I was wondering what’s the big deal as even now, I habitually carry no more than $20 in cash…but have plenty of CCs and ATM cards if I need to make large purchases or make larger cash withdrawals.</p>
<p>I don’t really care all that much what other people’s arrangements are or were “back in the day” with their parents. My kids have cell phones. I pay for those phones, not so that they can be in contact with other people, but so that they can be in contact with me. Otherwise, they can pay for their own cell phones. </p>
<p>First we get all “horrified” on this board that kids could have something happen to them and nobody would notice, then we decide that parents are being unreasonable expecting to be conctacted within a couple of days. It doesn’t matter what it “used to be like.” It matters only what it is like now. A lot of things “used to be different.” For example, dorms used to have curfews and dorm mothers, too. Who cares?</p>
<p>I don’t care if the kid wanted to go to OWS. I care that he didn’t have the courtesy to contact his parents and let them know he was all right. “I"m fine. Don’t worry.” Not a long text, imho.</p>
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<p>Even though my post rambled a bit with how things used to be, I came to the same conclusion as you did above. With the ease of communication nowadays, there was no excuse for that kid’s behavior.</p>
<p>Actually, this article was a cute little puff piece by the AP, that some parents used to make a political statement.</p>
<p>HaH! I’m sure I rambled at least as much as anyone. :)</p>
<p>Parent, what political point? I don’t see a political point except, “let your parents know you are all right.”</p>
<p>In my world, if this is a political statement, which I’m sure it could be construed to be by some, we’re getting a little bit too political. ;)</p>
<p>Let’s just suppose, for the sake of discussion, that his (not yours or my) family is accustomed to not touching base for several days or a week between contacts.</p>
<p>Initiating a phone call home from OWS is the last thing on his mind. If/when it crossed his mind, at Zucotti Park there is no place to recharge phone batteries. Nearby merchants are not eager to share their electrical outlets. You can’t leave unattended electronics in any NYC bathroom. </p>
<p>So, figure his cellphone was inactive for several days. Then, when the student did figure out a way to activate it, for some other purpose, he found the uncle’s urgent text and replied immediately to notify family he was fine.</p>
<p>Maybe?</p>
<p>We used to call our house once, hang up and wait for our parents to call back. It was every Sunday morning.</p>
<p>Everything is relative; during my school days, I would send an “Aerogram” (wonder if the post office still makes those, and if they do, who uses them) to my parents. I would cram them with text in a miniscule font, perhaps once a month, with explanations like, “there are things on roads in the US called exits …”, and that was more than adequate. Today it’s text messages multiple times a day, or something is amiss.</p>
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<p>That was obviously a political statement aimed at students involved in OWS. </p>
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<p>Agreed. My post didn’t express that expectation (I hope.) My intention was more to point out that college students leave after a semester, or even in the middle of a semester, for personal reasons that aren’t related to character flaws or who is paying the bills. Jobs has said that he left because he didn’t want his parents to pay for college when he himself wasn’t sure why he was there. </p>
<p>So maybe the kid in Wisconsin is going through the same type of doubts and doesn’t want to cost his parents any more money. </p>
<p>And for the record, I agree that if he knew his relatives were trying to reach him, he should have responded right away rather than let them worry. That makes him inconsiderate, not some kind of moron.</p>