UA CC parents

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Alabama
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<p>OP –
Although you are in your 20s, there is a BIG difference for the post 9-11 world. You may have been on the cusp. Seems so much changed indirectly with Homeland security (banking, medical, etc.). </p>

<p>As far as day to day stuff, my 17 yr old wishes I were not involved. But when I get involved things move along much quicker.</p>

<p>example: There was an error on his final report card. He wanted to handle it. I gave him a few days, but administration was not responding and I did not want the transcript sent wrong to the college. Within an hour of my contacting the school, the school resolved the issue. </p>

<p>My son could have taken care of this and would have eventually gotten it fixed. However, the “adults” in charge just responded to a parent in a more professional and timely manner. And time was not on my son’s side.</p>

<p>As for course advice, I simply have learned that folks here have a great deal of knowledge and experience. Why recreate the wheel, if I can get advice here. My son finds the some of the students on CC over the top and doesn’t want to visit CC. If you have seen any of the high school sub-forum, you would understand his attitude.</p>

<p>Most of my help with course advice for him was helping him layout time slots. As another poster said, orientation came on the heels of AP exams, finals, graduation and senior trips. Rather then see my kid stress, I helped with the time layouts. I did not pick his courses. He did. Sine 7th grade he has picked his own.</p>

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<p>Sadly, this is often the case, and this is often why parents need to become involved in something that a child SHOULD be able to handle. I remember my D once trying to get a schedule change accomplished in high school, and she was told repeatedly by her GC (she was persistent) that it wasn’t possible. I picked up the phone and the change was made immediately. It didn’t send a good message to my daughter.</p>

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<p>I don’t disagree that my brother needs that style of parenting. But as the seemingly prevailing parenting style these days, is one to also imply that more children “need” this parenting style than those who don’t?</p>

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<p>Sorry, leonard - in re-reading your original post you made that very clear. Note to self: No more reading or replying to posts before morning Red Bull. :)</p>

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<p>I didn’t think you were attacking, cleonard. I was just trying to point out that what works for some doesn’t work for others. As others have said, even the same set of parents raise their own kids differently. </p>

<p>I think on CC you will also find more educated parents; parents who know to do the research because they have either been there themselves or done the college thing with older children. </p>

<p>I was a completely hands off parent while my UA soon was in high school by mutual agreement. At UA there are so many programs and opportunities that it takes a lot of time to navigate through it all. No harm in helping research.</p>

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<p>really, i don’t think it is the prevailing parenting style. there are some helicopter parents and more that aren’t. the ones that are are just way more noticeable, like the squeaky wheel.</p>

<p>here … there are a few that are overboard, but i don’t consider most to be helicopter parents.</p>

<p>i would echo a lot of what has been said.</p>

<p>my parents didn’t help me with anything but paying. i found my own apartment, i made my own BAD schedule, i didn’t get a dorm because i didn’t know about the deadline etc.</p>

<p>as most here are sending the kids to a school far away, this is where we can get info. with my kid that is at school close to home … i really don’t do anything for her. she doesn’t want help. so, she suffers with a different apartment than i would have picked, a crappy schedule with some rotten teachers etc.</p>

<p>i know some helicopter parents … one that is still regularly on the phone with people from her son’s college! while there are some here that may be that extreme, i assure you most aren’t.</p>

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<p>What seems to have been missed in the above comments is the reality that most people on CC are parents of high-achieving kids – honors, scholarships, the proverbial “academic elite.” Most kids who fit that description got that way because their parents pushed them, and managed their lives pretty closely to assure academic excellence. </p>

<p>This is sort of based on an unwritten understanding between parent and child: The kid is himself ambitious and competitive, and will cede a certain amount of independence and decision-making authority to the parent, whose interests are the same. As the kid progresses and gets more successful, the more the parent hovers to assure that the goals are reached. </p>

<p>This does tend to result in kids who are sheltered and lack some real-world savvy. It’s a trade-off. If you have a kid who is average academically, I can see the likelihood of resentment and an unpleasant parent/child relationship. It is no coincidence that many parents on CC have commented about their children being socially awkward (me included).</p>

<p>So let’s not fool ourselves. No need to be in denial about your level of involvement in your kids’ lives. It is what it is. Not always a good thing, but I don’t see anyone on here bragging about a B+ their kid got in community college.</p>

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<p>A hands-on parent understands this and provides roots and wings. A helicopter parent understands half of this and grounds the child, ultimately to everyone’s detriment.</p>

<p>Hands-on parenting consists of knowing what your kids are doing, family dinners with the TV turned off, lots of dialogue, being authoritative, setting clear boundaries, and rewarding responsibility with freedom. </p>

<p>Helicopter parenting is co-dependent, authoritarian, stifling to growth, and fear-based. </p>

<p>Hands-off parenting is negligent.</p>

<p>Hands-on parenting is the gold standard. The other two styles keep me in business.</p>

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<p>Cleonard,
What do Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods,
Bill Gates, and many other successful people have? </p>

<p>They all have coaches, mentors, or well-informed parents…</p>

<p>No man is an island…It takes a village to raise a child these days…Our children’s network is not well-connected yet…We just show them the door and our kids knock on them or they bust them down. </p>

<p>Successful people have more successful people that they speak to and bounce ideas off of…Bill Gates just happen to have Warren Buffet.</p>

<p>My 2 cents, do not afraid to ask for help and to ask more questions…ROLL TIDE Y’ALL</p>

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<p>cleonard19 - if you want to know what it’s like to helicoptered-parented, I’m sure the CC parents will help you out. Aeromom will “gently” force you to fill out every scholarship app available for 2013, TXA will measure every inch of your housing and container-ize each and every one of your possessions and I will bedazzle you a “Save me from my helicopter parents” t-shirt that you will wear with pride.</p>

<p>Added: We parents learn a lot with child #1 and sometimes adjust our parenting style with child #2. It’s a dirty little secret that child #1 is an experiment.</p>

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<p>Have to agree about standing back and waiting for the kid to handle something then having to jump in and get it taken care of. This happened routinely in high school. Sadly! DD was an IB/AP student and one year she received her schedule to see they out her in a regulars science and history class. They got their schedules on the first day of class so it was imperative to get her schedule changes pronto. She was told by the GC office to “come back next week”. Uh, NO! She’d miss assignments as IB and AP classes don’t waste time jumping in on the first day. She sat in the GC’s office and kept asking. She even told them she would go to the classes she should be in regardless of the schedule she was given. They didn’t like that one bit! It would also give her absences, a no go! By lunch time she called me and asked me to do something. I attempted to call with no luck. So, mom got in her car and drove up there, marched in the office and kindly asked for her GC. Schedule changed in 10 minutes. :slight_smile:
Another time D called as she had been marked absent for a class she was not even in. Really?!?!?!? GC told her she had to go to the attendance office. They told her that they must get an email directly from the teacher. That teacher was out and busy with UIL contests. This absence would force her to take all of her exams even though she was exempt from several. I called, they even tried to hesitate with me. Flat out told them that it was NOT our job and they should have caught that in their office to start with. Asked them how on earth they could mark her absent for a class she is not even in and the computer should not even allow that. Ten minutes later it was fixed.
As said earlier, it is disheartening for these kids that have been taught to be responsible and know what to do to have to call on their parents. </p>

<p>There was an article out recently about the helicopter parenting. Sited a dad that called their sons college prof to insist the kid earned a higher grade on their final. Uh, NO! That is way over the top. I would not even do that for elementary aged kids!</p>

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<p>I just want to say … I LOVE the UA forum and the parental involvement. I hope DS chooses UA next year, just so I can keep lurking here! ;)</p>

<p>I think you see more parents on CC that help with the kids schedules because that’s the type of parents we are. If we weren’t involved in our students education goals, we wouldn’t be on CC. So, naturally, you will see a lot of involved parents here. </p>

<p>My parents were not involved at all in my higher ed. I ended up going to school part time while working full time. Missed the whole dorm/college life experience. My DS is a high stats kid and I want the world for him! I want him to experience things I did not. And he wants it, too. But, he is not interested in doing the research. He knows he wants engineering. He thinks he wants to get away from all the kids he goes to high school with - which will mean going to an OOS school. So I have been his secretary. The decision will be his based on programs offered and scholarships received. He does not want to go into debt and he knows we have $XX for school. If I see a program at a school that I think he would enjoy, I’ll point it out to him. </p>

<p>I agree, I have learned a lot through CC. There are many programs available at each school that we may not have been aware of without CC - or may have learned about too late. (In fact, I probably would have never even looked into UA without CC!) DS is a rising senior, so I will have him look into CBHP and some of the other honors programs. We know now that if he wants priority housing, that he will need get the deposits in early. If left up to him, the research would be done, but maybe not until next March which would be late!!</p>

<p>My question is … Why are UA parents more involved on CC than other schools? Some of the other boards may go weeks between posts and it is mostly students posting instead of parents?</p>

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<p>I think we’ve become autocatalytic!</p>

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<p>In my case, my own parents did not finish high school. In fact, they both had to drop out to work and help raise younger siblings in their 8th grade years. They worked very hard and encouraged me to go to college, but they had no idea HOW to help. I don’t think I even toured my public college; I just knew someone else going there and applied. I think my parents were relieved that I figured it all out on my own! They paid and I made sure not to waste their hard-earned money. </p>

<p>Looking back, I’m sure I missed out on many opportunities (study abroad, various programs, etc.) because I didn’t even know they existed. My DH and I have a small amount of knowledge from our own college experiences, but what we know best is the importance of education. We research (THANK YOU CC) and propose options to our DD. She takes it from there. What was the first thing my parents (now in their seventies) did when they both retired? They earned their GEDs! Yep, I have learned the importance of education, and I want to give my DDs every opportunity to make the best of theirs.</p>

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<p>Having recently graduated from UA and known students who were raised under many different types of parenting styles, I do feel that the parenting style for each child depends both on the parent(s) and the individual child.</p>

<p>I do not consider my upbringing to have been helicopter-style. Instead, as the oldest I was raised primarily around adults and seek advice when I know they have experience in the area. As I know very few family friends who attended college, I did a lot of research and planning by myself with a lot of help from CC and college guidebooks. I feel that I turned out really well as a result, but recognize that this approach is not the best choice for everyone, including my siblings.</p>

<p>One thing I think all parents need to realize is that their child is not them and will often have different dreams and desires for themselves. I have seen too many students disowned because their parents wanted a specific lifestyle for their child which is incompatible with what their child, now an adult, wants. Wanting to control your children for their entire lives or at least until they are married is not a desirable trait. On the opposite note, financially-stable parents who require their children to go be self sufficient at 16 or 18, especially if the child hasn’t graduated high school and has an job which provides a livable income, is often much worse. </p>

<p>Going back to being very independent during my college career, I felt that such independence was a privilege I earned and kept renewing by getting good grades and helping my family with other tasks. I also operate primarily on a full disclosure basis.</p>

<p>One of my favorite songs is “That’s My Job” by Conway Twitty. The gist of the song is that the father’s primary goal is to make sure his child(ren) are safe, happy, and healthy, even if he doesn’t always agree with their decisions. In the main example, while he disagrees with the singer’s decision to move out west, he funds the remaining portion of the airfare there and promises to pay for the return airfare home in case things don’t work out, saying “that’s my job.” When I become a father, I want to treat my children with the same level of respect and admiration.</p>

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<p>Great post, Seatide. I am sure your family is very proud of you. </p>

<p>In addition, you make a good point about birth order and being the oldest child. My oldest was pretty independent because her 2 younger sibling (15 months apart) were toddlers and I was, frankly, frazzled. Fulltime job and 3 kids, two of which were so young. I am much more hands on with D2 and S because I can be- it really does depend on many factors.</p>

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<p>My son will be a sophomore at UA this fall and I’ve posted numerous times on this forum. Mom2collegekids, ahpimommy, malanai, and the hysterical one whose names shall not be mentioned for fear of being kicked off of CC again are priceless. If I hadn’t found this forum my son’s first year would have been a little bumpier. Thanks to these folks my son had first pick for a room, got the football ticket package that he wanted, had an easy time getting a bid from a fraternity, knew when and how to sign up for BamaBound, and the list goes on and on. And, thanks to this forum and the great parents and students who post on it, I was able to help guide my son and have many laugh out loud moments!</p>

<p>However, I do understand Cleanard19’s fascination with some of the comments posted on this forum. Many have made me cringe. For example, I remember a post regarding how often a student was eating at the dining hall. Seriously!?!? I’m often surprised by how much parents know about the nitty gritty details of what’s on their student’s MyBama page, especially since those kids are high achievers. I am a huge proponent of being involved in a child’s life but there comes a time when a parent needs to back off and let their child figure things out on their own. I think part of the controlling behaviors that you see on this forum stem from a fear of failure. No one wants to see their child fail but the reality of life is that sometimes failure is a necessary recipe in being successful. </p>

<p>My son is not an honor student and when he was in high school I was constantly monitoring him. I had to make sure he did his homework, studied for tests, got to lax practice on time, etc…, therefore, I logged into his PowerSchool account daily. It was exhausting but something that I felt that I needed to do to make sure he graduated from high school. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very smart kid according to the results of his IQ test (given to him in elementary school when he was tested for LD’s), he just lacks organization and often times motivation. Very frustrating!!! I could have continued on with the constant monitoring once he left for college but he made it clear that he wouldn’t have it. In his words he was now a man and it was up to him to succeed, not me. His father and I told him that we would allow him to be the man that he wanted to be but we had expectations that he needed to meet. We also made sure that he understood that successful adults know when to ask questions and for advice. </p>

<p>It was hard for me to let go but I knew that I had to do it. He gave me the password to his MyBama account and he told me that he trusted me to use it wisely. Did I want to check up on him? YES! But I didn’t. He finished his first semester with a GPA that was above the line in the sand that we drew when we promised that we wouldn’t interfere. He did that in spite of going through the trials and tribulations of being a first semester freshman far away from home and an intense pledgship with his fraternity. His second semester wasn’t quite as good as his first but he took tougher classes and was distracted a bit by a certain pretty girl. Yet, he finished up the year with a decent GPA (not by CC standards, but he’s not a CC kind of student). </p>

<p>So Cleanard19, here’s my advice to you as a future parent. Love your kids unconditionally, don’t tell them, show them, accept them for who they are (don’t try and mold them into what you want them to be), make learning fun and they will learn to love to learn, eat dinner as a family every night if possible and set aside family time on the weekends, set boundaries and consequences and don’t waiver from them, and finally, your children will grow into adults, accept it, embrace it, and let go because they keep coming back. :)</p>

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<p>I think one reason many parents are more involved than they used to be is that the stakes are a lot higher now. College is much more expensive than it was when I was a student and there are a lot fewer jobs. Missteps can be much more devastating than they used to be, both financially and emotionally. I try to educate myself so I can give my kids sound advice and guidance, but ultimately they make their own decisions.</p>

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<p>Technology is the answer. You can ask many questions, prevent some mistakes, and guide all from the comfort of your favorite chair.</p>

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<p>Great post, Lovemykids2. Thank you.</p>