My daughter is transferring this year from a school that wasn’t a good social fit. She’s got friends where she’s going but I worry that she will continue to be very inflexible. Likes to eat, exercise, study, etc… at certain times and has difficulty going with the flow. She also is a not a drinker and prefers to stay away from any party type situations. I want her to be able to relax and go have fun- be around the drinkers, but doesn’t have to partake- and have fun.
I want to bring one important consideration into this discussion. I’ll shout it: MAKE SURE THE KID IS WELL RESTED WHEN S/HE HEADS TO COLLEGE. Have as calm a summer as possible. Get the major last-minute things done: shopping for clothing and dorm; banking, money management; communications (cellphone, etc.); familiarization with details of the curriculum and course-selections that must be made after arrival; making contact with the prospective roommate(s); figuring out how to get kid and her stuff to the college.
But get those things out of the way, take a true family vacation, and get your kid’s mind off of college prep for a spell of several weeks.
I’m not going into detail, but our youngest came down with mono after her first week at college. She had NOT rested and relaxed during summer but rather partied too much. The illness itself was manageable (had to reduce her first-year class load, however) but she was somewhat off kilter in her course schedule because she dropped a course.
So to the parents: Make sure your kids REST and RELAX and that the key preparations are done well before they set off for the college.
ALSO I neglected another important area of preparation: MEDICAL and health care. Make sure your kid has a doctor’s exam, updates any needed vaccinations, renews prescriptions (and figures out how meds will be obtained at college). Make sure that the travel/moving kit has a basic supply of prescription and nonprescription medicines. Have an eye exam and renew prescription lenses, eyeglasses as needed.
@mackinaw – that’s a very good point about medical and prescriptions. My D18 is prone to pneumonia after colds ever since she had that damn swine flu a decade ago (it may also be related to PPROM and being born early). She’s aware of it and uses her inhalers when she feels it starting up. Of course, who knows what will happen when she’s off at college and, hopefully, having a good time. We won’t be there to remind her.
The idea of introducing kids to alcohol before going away to college is interesting, but we have an absolutely horrible family history of alcoholism. I would have a hard time encouraging one of my kids to have a drink even with me present because I would be terrified of triggering alcohol abuse. I would say at least half of their relatives on both sides have this problem and it’s very easy to tell which one of my children is particularly susceptible. They have witnessed the effects of alcoholism and I talk to them frankly about their risk, but I’m not sure what else to do except encourage them to call if they ever have a problem.
@MACmiracle people who become alcoholics tend to have general addictive personalities and alcohol just happens to be their addiction of choice. They could just as easily become addicted to other things, some more benign than others (eg drugs, cigarettes, sugar, gambling, video games, social media/internet, pornography). So while staying away from alcohol is a smart strategy, I’d be aware of signs of other types of addiction.
@gwnorth I completely agree with you. A couple of older relatives have other relatively benign addictions or even functional OCD. It’s just the alcohol and drugs that have been so life-altering and traumatic to witness.
@MACmiracle, we also have a heavy dose of genes for alcoholism on one side of the family. My husband and I have been following the research on alcoholism since we had kids. In general, the findings indicate that the longer you can wait to start drinking, the safer. If you start drinking at 15, your chances of addiction are about twice as high as if you wait until 21. It’s hard for researchers to analyze whether this could be because people with a tendency towards addiction drink earlier, or whether drinking early makes alcohol abuse more likely for everyone. I figure either way, it would be better for our kids to be older and more mature when they start.
We also read studies saying that parental permissiveness is a risk factor for teen drinking, so we did set the strong expectation of no underaged drinking. I had considered a more “European model” of giving them drinks at home, but changed my mind after reading stuff like this: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127222042
I mean no criticism to anyone making different decisions. I grew up with the European model and I’m totally fine. I just wanted to chime in for those of us who have lost family members to alcoholism and worry about the genetics.
Having to deal with the alcohol issue is new for us. The drinking age where we are (Ontario) is 19. When I attended university, high school was still 5 years so most students were of age when they started. Now that high school has been scaled back to 4 years, a large majority of the first year students are underage (there is still a large proportion of students who return for a 5th year of high school known as a victory lap). Not sure if it makes it easier for students to avoid over drinking in their first year when it’s supposed to be dry. Hopefully by second year they’ve gotten a lot of the “away from home for the first time” out of their system and so more likely to party responsibly.
The oldest, girl, I worry about her anxiety/depression. The middle (boy) I worry that he is a follower and likely to enjoy drunkenness. The youngest, girl, is only in 7th grade and other than being really picky about her clothes doesn’t have me concerned yet.
My D has never really found a great group of friends in High School. She’s just not of those girly girly girls who seem to fit in wherever they go. I just hope she finds her tribe.