<p>jym626, That is a bad deal. That was one of the first things S did with leases. He explained that he would be going through with his video camera and do a very detailed examination of the property for a good record of the condition when he moved in. He had no problem moving out of the first place and did the same with the second. He didn’t do the in the dorm room, but I would recommend that for all students moving into any place including-heck especially, a dorm room.</p>
<p>Kids are not born to know how to advocate for themselves. It also takes experience to know how to negotiate for the best outcome. </p>
<p>I asked to see D1’s rental contract before she signed it. She didn’t think it was necessary initially because it was a standard collegetown contract, and didn’t think she could or should negotiate (afraid of losing out on the apartment). I managed to negotiate a stand alone contract for D1 even though she had a roommate, and she had the option of selecting a new roommate if her roommate should decide to move out. In exchange, I guaranteed the payment.</p>
<p>I coached D1 on the whole job hunting process - from writing resume, which companies to target, when to have interviews, and what to say at interviews. Could she have it on her own? Maybe. But why shouldn’t I have passed on my years of experience? D2 is going to law school. I am going to have to turn her over to my sister and BIL.</p>
<p>For many of us who are still working, we have our bosses intervene on our behalf from time to time. We are not out there on our own making decisions all by ourselves. When I first started working, I used to ask for my supervisor’s opinion on everything before I did anything, but as I moved up and became more experienced I began to act on my own more and more. At this point of my career, my immediate manager is not in the same country as me, unless it’s absolutely critical he wouldn’t intervene. I do the same now with people who work for me. It is a balance to know when to step in and when to let people do what they have to do, even if it means they should fail sometimes. But if it’s really going to hit the company’s bottom line then I would intervene.</p>
<p>I have a hard time calling it intervening on behalf of the child when the person who pays the bills is involved in financial matters.</p>
<p>I just remembered that I did call the school once on my son’s behalf-sorta. Immediatly after his Soph year ended, a friend committed suicide. I called the health services department to see if they offered counseling services during the summer break. The had just learned of the suicide and were in the process of setting up meetings that students could attend. I figured that was a time for D to make a call.</p>
<p>Tylerspapa,
We had the “before” and “after” dorm room check in/out photos and list. This school was notorious for nickel and diming the students for stuff like this (especially in teh freshman dorms). His roommate got fined for a dest drawer being off track or something ridiculously stupid. They claimed that they had to do more than the standard carpet cleaning to get the stain up. My DS was alreaady gone for the summer or I’d have made him go in with carpet cleaner and remove the stain. It was not worth my time to continue to argue. I negiotiated down. That was better than nothing.</p>
<p>I’m with oldfort on this one…and some parent-child relationships are closer than others. I know of many high school kids who don’t communicate much at all with their parents, others are an open book.
I don’t see why that has to change much when kids go off to college. Help when asked, but not intervening when not asked.</p>
<p>jym626,
Sometime that’s all you can do. The LL in the town S is going to school in are notorious for coming up with reasons not to give the deposit back. That’s why S was as adament about it with them up front and that made them easier for him to deal with. Plus it helped that the school has an office set up to help students with rental.<br>
It’s pretty sad when the school is the one who is trying to screw the students.</p>
<p>My interventions:</p>
<p>When Son was seeing a campus counselor for depression a year ago, I had debrief phone calls with the doc after each appt. This was done with Son’s permission, according to HIPAA regs.</p>
<p>When the school’s fundraising office called for a donation in October I made my pledge then asked the solicitor-student how she got the job. She explained, and I passed the info on to Son. The poopy head still hasn’t followed-up to seek employment. :mad:</p>
<p>Since son reached employable age (16) at the worst of the great recession, he’s never really found a “teenage job.” So, H has given him some work with the family business. We (myself, H, and S) would all prefer that he worked elsewhere. But, sometimes, ya just gotta take the work that comes alomg.</p>
<p>Got one ongoing now. Will hold details until it’s resolved (next week, if all goes well), but essentially,there was a mismatch between school rules about transfer classes and what actually appears on the forms/in the handbook/ told to students, and a school functionary was giving D short shrift whenever she called to resolve the issue, so DH (with her permission) gave them a call just to find out what the story was. Not sure what he said (but I’m positive he got much farther than I would have done!), but there may now be a workaround that meets everybody’s needs.</p>
<p>I also wrote a letter in support of a student petition at D3’s request. The Dean gave me a great response, but let’s just say I now share her opinion of the college president…</p>
<p>I haven’t had to intervene, thankfully, nothing terrible has come up. They do come to us for advice, which is different. We pay the bills and D gave me her password so I can check on the financial stuff and financial aid. She knows it and I don’t abuse. </p>
<p>But I would intervene if I had to. S emailed us his resume and we had long talks about interviews and job seeking. He called us to ask our advice on picking his health care plans and retirement plans (boy that makes me feel old, to have a kid who has a retirement plan lol). I also negotiated when the car dealer was trying to rip him off, ok I shouldn’t have but I was so ****ed I just went off! </p>
<p>But I really wish D’s boyfriend who ask his parents to help him. I know he’s an adult, but other adults should act like one and not try to intimidate students. And university politics stink.</p>
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<p>I don’t see what having a close relationship has to do with the discussion. You can have a very close relationship with a child while encouraging autonomy and independence, you can be very involved and plugged in and be close, and you can also be ridiculously helicoptering and still have a close relationship. Likewise, you can be any of those things, and still not have a satisfying, close relationship. I’ve seen all of the above.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure I get what you’re saying here.</p>
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<p>I think it has a lot to do with it. Some relationships are so open that the parent knows everything that is going on and advice flows freely and welcomed. In not so close relationships the kid would be more apt to do things on his own.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Had to intervene and sign a permission slip for DS to get a flu shot as a freshman as he was still 17.</p></li>
<li><p>Roommate with significant mental health issues with a crisis event. RA not helpful. I contacted the Dean of Students to get her involved in making sure it was resolved properly and to make sure DS got out of it OK.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Timely post. D didn’t do well in 2 classes; we discussed what she could do (approach the professor respectfully and go over her work in the class). One prof said she could submit redone work over Xmas break, which D did. D emailed this prof: “thank you for the chance to resubmit the work. I have now submitted it. I will wait to hear from you”. D followed up with 2 emails; no response. D ran into this prof on campus yesterday; asked about the grade; prof said – it’s too late now!</p>
<p>I do not want to get involved. I will not email the prof. I told D she could email her again, but I don’t think this person is either organized or capable. I feel like my role is to support D and help her figure out a way to deal with issues, not step in and solve them. Why ask D to redo the work then say it’s too late? Not loving this school right now…</p>
<p>Class of 2015, It never occurred to me to tell son to ask to redo work in the class he did the worst in. I wonder if it would have been an option…If it HAD occurred to me I would have suggested it, and after your story would ask him to email the prof so hopefully the prof would reply by email and the deal would be in writing.</p>
<p>Luckily, the course transfers with the grade he got, but the gpa starts new at his new school, so it worked out. Good to know for the future, but he better not NEED to worry about it!</p>
<p>I’m not sure exactly what an intervention is. I have not called university officials at my kids’ schools about anything other than invoices that seem incorrect. Where there are issues, I coach them on what to do if they ask. I will edit emails (my dyslexic son sometimes calls to dictate sensitive emails). We’ve had very few problems. My daughter dealt with a roommate problem fall semester and negotiated a swap of rooms with another student and then got the bureaucracy of her school to approve it after a number of bureaucratic rejections. I did nothing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when my daughter decided during her first semester that she wanted to transfer to another school within her university, she went to the administrative people in that school on her own with questions and, we discovered later, they’d given her misleading answers. She later followed up with admissions people who gave her more accurate answers (and learned that she couldn’t transfer directly but would have to reapply as a freshman and get very little credit for her first year). If I had had called, I would have realized that she would likely have been better off withdrawing than finishing out the semester. But, I didn’t intervene at that point. At my suggestion, on January 5th, she called one of the schools to which she was applying to ask if she should be applying as a transfer student or a freshman and how they would treat her if she finished out the year or withdrew. That school, based upon her HS record, told her that if she could get everything in – HS transcript and recs, ACT scores, university transcript (with only one grade because the rest were full year courses), and letters from the other four professors saying what her grade would have been if they were giving half-year grades and getting the transcript and grades to an independent agency to vet them and have them complete their work on an expedited basis to the school – by January 13th, they would consider her for the winter term 2012. Well, she was working with at least two slow-moving bureaucracies – her large university and the vetting agency – and with professors who would have to do work quickly that they would otherwise not have to do. I dealt with the vetting agency for the most part and coached her on how to get the university and her professors and her old HS guidance office to do what they needed to do in the necessary time frame. I doubt that most 18 year olds could have done this without a lot of coaching. Maybe some of your kids could, but mine could not. Anyway, she was admitted on the 13th (they received the final documents on the 12th), we picked her up on the 14th (an 8 hour drive), drove home on the 15th and orientation started on the 17th. Classes started on the 19th.</p>
<p>What I try to do is to use each of these situations as a moment for teaching them life skills. I’m sure it works with my son; less clear with my daughter. But, she is now happily studying what she think she really wants and at which, in my judgment, she is likely to be really good. Without my intervention, she’d likely be at her old school finishing out the semester and starting over a year later. This school serendipitously has a five year accelerated MS program into which she is automatically admitted if her grades are good enough (which I consider reasonably likely given the close connection between the actions and the goal). So, I think I have used my skills to help launch her in a direction that both she and I think fits her talents and passions (and which she chose without any involvement fromme). If that is an intervention, I’m happy to have done it. I won’t be taking her classes for her.</p>
<p>I don’t consider that the kids will have magically internalized all of the life skills at age 18 and in our case, one kid will pick them up some faster than the other. I’ve also handled financial things nearly completely for my son, who is a brilliant but dyslexic kid who is having fabulous success at college but does so by focusing only on a very limited number of things. He doesn’t really spend much, but we pay the bills. We’ve never told him he has a monthly allowance or had him pay the credit card bill. He deals with the world as someone who optimizes relative to constraints. At the right time, making sure bills get paid and the money doesn’t run out will be an additional constraint. He could do it now, but, he doesn’t need the distraction (and it would be more distracting to him than to most kids) and I’ll let him excel at the things he’s chosen to excel at. My daughter, who spends more money, pays most of her own bills. I want her to understand what she’s spending and for the most part, she won’t find it problematic to manage it. Different kids will pick up different life skills at different times. They don’t necessarily have to pick them up at age 18 to be successful adults. And, teaching them to be successful and hopefully happy adults is my goal.</p>
<p>I never intervened for S, did once this year for D. As an athlete, she has to coordinate some health care through the team trainer. She was trying to get seen for a problem and had made multiple calls to the doctor’s office with no luck, had written an e-mail to the doctor as directed by the trainer when she complained no one was getting back to her (who ever heard of e-mailing a doctor to get an appointment?), had asked for another doctor she could call, etc. and the weeks were passing. D was fed up and frustrated. So with finals coming up and a lot of other stuff on her plate, she decided simply not to address the health problem–ever. Said she was fine, it wasn’t that bad.</p>
<p>I e-mailed the team trainer to say I was concerned about accessibility of health care and expressed my dissatisfaction with the process. D got an appointment shortly thereafter.</p>
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<p>Yes, kids are different. I don’t recall intervening about anything for my D since she was in middle school. She is extremely competent and sensible. We did tell her that if she moves off campus at some point, we need to see the lease before she signs it.</p>
<p>S on the other hand is incredibly disorganized and hates to ask for help. He has required a lot of management just to get through high school (so far). I wouldn’t be surprised if more management and intervention is required in college.</p>
<p>People are talking about two different things here…helping and intervening. </p>
<p>Help=“Mom, can you look over this lease contract before I sign it”</p>
<p>Intervening=“Son, here is the lease contract I negotiated, sign it”.</p>
<p>We have a very close relationship with our children but that doesn’t mean we will do everything for them. Our youngest had some scheduling issues with his junior and senior schedule (high school). He told us what he thought he should do, we offered our opinion, he worked it out on his own. The kids’ counselor in high school won’t even talk to the parents until the kids have tried to get things done on their own.</p>
<p>We have certainly offered our opinions on various college related matters but in the end, it is their decision or their responsibility to take care of whatever.</p>