What do you worry about most re: your child's personality when going to college?

Parent Cafe
1

I’m wondering what other parents feel about their child’s personal “weaknesses” (for lack of a better term) and are maybe trying to cram lessons in for the next few months? I’m not thinking about study or academic habits necessarily, but maybe life skills they don’t have or you may have inadvertently taken care of for them as they grew up?

For my daughter, I worry about her sometimes oblivious nature. She has grown up in a very rural, safe area and will be going to college in NYC. She is familiar with the city as both her uncles live there and she’s been visiting, walking, taking subways, etc for several years. However, when she’s been there, she’s been with family so can do things like listen to her music, browse her phone, and not be as careful as when she would be out alone. So I am concerned that she will not be safety conscious enough because she hasn’t been conditioned to be so, either at home or in cities.

Things that concern me are: listening to her music too loudly to pay attention to noises around her, not keeping her eyes moving to scan what’s around (this was a big concern with driving) because she tends to zone out, or feeling comfortable going to parks, restaurants etc alone or in the evenings, especially once it gets dark really early and she is just finishing classes. She really values her alone time and knows she will be surrounded by people in college, so we have been having conversations about her tendencies as well as measures she needs to take. I am not trying to harass or browbeat her, and I’ve started them with asking things like “What concerns you most about moving, even though I know you’re excited?” Then I will follow up with what my concerns for her are. There are even little things like when she wears her purse or bag crossbody, she tends to have it behind her butt/on her hip instead of in front of her body.

I’m also concerned about her love of solitude, and satisfaction with being an only child, that she won’t reach out to make friends, and have expressed that to her and talked about ways to interact. She’s been with the same group of kids since kindergarten, and everyone pretty much developed their friend groups in middle school, so there was not much need to branch out.

She also tends to down herself sometimes, and I worry about her not getting caught up in the ultra competitive nature of a top school or feeling like she doesn’t belong there, or getting accepted was a fluke. The depression and suicide rates are alarming and I don’t want her to become a victim, so we’ve talked about mental health services.

What, if anything, do you worry about for your kids? Eating healthy, too much Netflix/tv/gaming, not doing laundry, not being able to manage daily life (setting dr appts, for example, if you’ve always done it), or any other topic? Sorry this is so long.

2

Maybe just being responsible for getting everything she needs with her and being ready on time. I tend to follow up on details with her all the time (hey, it’s 11 miles to school, don’t want to have to run after stuff left at home). It’s really not too necessary, she does a good job generally. She won’t turn 18 until the first month of college, so she’s young and she’s my baby :slight_smile:

And I just hope she finds her people at college, she really needs a good friend group as she doesn’t have a particularly good one at HS.

3

@bjscheel my daughter is young too, she also won’t be 18 until September. I definitely understand about the friend group thing. She has a couple, but at this time of applications and scholarships and stress and all that, familiarity tends to breed contempt. I told her that in college, friends will be more based on interests and commonality instead of default due to geography.

4

One I worried about because she is an airhead. “What?” is her favorite question because she doesn’t pay attention. She is terrible with money, and doesn’t understand that taking an extra semester will cost her a LOT of money because she’ll lose the little scholarship, she’ll have to pay for room and board, and tuition goes up every semester. She can’t really figure out how to build a schedule so that she has blocks of time to work or study.

The other I just worried about being hurt, physically and emotionally. She was very young (17) and was taking on a tough major and I couldn’t help her with it or even make suggestions. She was playing a sport and I worried she’d be hurt. In fact, she was sick a lot but didn’t get hurt.

5

I worry about the boy thing. She hasn’t been out on a date or had one-on-one boy activity with her sports schedule/focus. She is unaware of her level of attractiveness and I hope she doesn’t fall prey to a bad boy. While at the same time, I worry that her being a collegiate athlete along with her more shy personality will keep her in a bubble and she WON’T connect with a boy. Sigh…

6

Our big concern is that he stay motivated. While very capable, he has a history of blowing off assignments in classes he doesn’t like. That, and getting his heart broken. Maybe he’ll stay too busy for that to happen.:slight_smile:

7

For my son, I’m most worried about what most consider the “simple” things. Simple organization to remember to turn in forms, basic ‘housekeeping’ things, etc. How can one do so well in school, but forget to tell us so many important “housekeeping” details?! He’s very smart, but remembering things like turning in required forms seems to escape him…I feel like he hasn’t evolved since grade school in that regard! Ha! To him, it’s just noise, I get it. But I’m overly organized and it drives me nuts.

8

I’m worried about peer pressure. My daughter has an amazing group of friends but they are the super nerdy type - when they have a party they play board games, cards, or video games. I worry about how she’ll handle big college parties, boys, alcohol, etc…

9

I worry about her anxiety issues interferring with her life. I worry about imposter syndrome and how it affects so many accomplished young women. But mostly I try NOT to worry because she is SO happy about this new chapter in her life!

10

For D1, I worried that she wouldn’t be serious about her academics. Not that she’d fail, but just might not thrive. I could not have been more wrong. She knocked the ball out of the park, graduated Phi Beta Kappa. Who knew?!? Certainly not her mom!

D2, more worries than I can count. But I think the octopus falling out of a tree style of organization topped the list. She managed to keep it together somehow in college while I winced and looked away. She will never be lauded for those skills, but she is much better than when she headed off to college. Their brains are still growing (thankfully).

@momofsenior1 Odds are high that she’ll track down a needy crew in college and continue her nerdy ideas of fun. That is pretty much what both my kids did.

11

Meant “nerdy”, of course.

12

My kid has a ton of personality issues which may come back to bite him in the future, but for now the two overriding concerns is 1) when he doesn’t have enough sleep (more than 5 hours) which is pretty much 100% of the time, he can sleep through everything. He has 3 alarm clocks and can sleep through all 3. I finally put in an Amazon Dot in his bedroom and wind up having to wake him up via Drop In most of the time. Yes I probably should just let him be late for class so he can learn his lessons, but his first period class is a very difficult class this year and he can’t afford to miss any time.

  1. has a terrible habit of going through the motions in a given class until he gets his first bad grade. Does enough to get a 90 or 91 average in almost every class, no matter how easy or hard it is. That bad habit came back to bite him in the butt this past semester as he got 5 Bs (he is taking 6 AP classes and a college class tho). He was doing much better this semester, until he got his acceptance to UC-B, and everything has gone downhill since then. Wouldn’t surprise me if he wound up again with 3 or 4 Bs.
13

Gaming and YouTube. Period. He’s so bright and and has so much potential but that could all be wasted if he can’t control himself.

14

D18 can get overwhelmed with too much noise and chaos, and she’s going to need a place to retreat. I’m hoping she’ll find some good options on campus.

She doesn’t cut corners and she thinks she has to everything, including optional work. She might not have the time to do that in college without getting very stressed.

15

With my S17 it was his pension for things a bit wild. He got over most of it his Sr. year in HS but because of major issues his Jr. year we worried. We knew that drinking might be an issue and worried he wouldn’t study enough. Well the 4.0 first semester, and studying most of the time with his gf made us feel a lot better. (He is 1000 miles from home). He decided to join a frat and that worried us. Another 4.0 second semester in a tough major made us feel a lot better! (Our worries did cost him a pair of lost car keys first semester and a lost phone second semester - but if that is the worst we are ok).

16

D18 is an introvert and I worry it will take her time to “find her people” so she may be lonely at first. She’s going to a top LAC and I worry she will have to adjust to not being the ‘top’ performer in classes and that will stress her.

Fort., she ended up choosing a college whose culture and vibe is pretty similar to where we live so I think she’ll feel like she fits in. And there’s a lot of accessible nature, farmer’s market, etc. which is important to her.

17

The boy thing with the second one. She “wasn’t ready” to date in high school, although she had plenty of opportunities. Then in college, she really didn’t know how (if that makes sense). She just graduated with a degree in CS and was on the track team, so she has lots of male friends. Anyway, now I guess it’s out in the world still not knowing how to date.

With the first one, it was a balance thing. She’s got a major case of FOMO, but she’s an introvert who REALLY needed to learn how to say no and go be alone to recharge. She figured it out.

I’d think in this time period, all of us should be worried about encouraging or allowing our students to remain dependent on us. That really isn’t good for anybody.

18

I worried with all 3. I knew they were capable of getting themselves up and out the door, knew they could navigate with teachers and administrators, knew they had the brain power to succeed, knew that they were socially capable of making friends and diving into a new “crowd”…but you still worry that they will drink too much, that they will skip class because others around them absolutely will, that they will get distracted by the freedom and not study. I think worrying for a semester or a year is totally normal.

19

With my oldest (who has since graduated) I worried that she’d be able to get up in the morning. She did sleep through multiple alarms and missed a day trip she had signed up and paid for, but she never missed a test and in four years only slept through one class. Now she’s an adult with a real job and when she has to get up extra early for something, she asks me to call her. And yes, this sometimes means calling back 10 minutes later to make sure she’s really awake.

My H still needs assistance getting up in the morning as well. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

20

When the boy went to college, we worried about how he was going to do his own laundry. He never did it before. Otherwise, we had no worries about his academic capabilities. We probably didn’t reckon with the fact that he would take advantage of being in a “major league city” by sometimes cutting class to attend professional sporting events.