<p>The odds of a crisis requiring parental intervention in the flesh are far less than getting in an auto accident on the way home after dropping your D off at Smith.</p>
<p>Btw, MWFN, I took Route 9 over towards Amherst today and there wasn't traffic backed up on the bridge either time.</p>
<p>LiT summer storage is not a problem. Each house has a storage space where students can store stuff over the summers and even a whole year if they are going JYA. Mine came back to find most of the stuff she had stored in reasonable shape (except Elizardabeth, her millet stuffed lizard, who did not survive and caused somewhat of a mess.)</p>
<p>"Btw, MWFN, I took Route 9 over towards Amherst today and there wasn't traffic backed up on the bridge either time."</p>
<p>Are you trying to make me feel awful or something? :)</p>
<p>Actually, we DID have a medical crisis last spring, so those things do happen. However, I got the call in the morning, and I was in Northampton by afternoon.</p>
<p>"So far" for us means about 3000 miles. I don't think you can get any farther. I think 300 miles would be perfect, with connecting flights to our local ( @ 35 miles) smallish airport. I'm not worried about anything dramatic, and certainly not about "running" home. Until lately anyway, D would never ask for or let me know she needed help. It's only recently that she's let herself be a little vulnerable, and I hope it's not too late.</p>
<p>Yeah, I live far from Smith (Seattle) and I do think that, as a student, the distance thing is not too much of a problem. I do get homesick from time to time, and when I'm not feeling well or having some kind of dramatic young adult crisis I really wish I could go home. But I mean, as an adult, I won't neccessarily live by my family, so learning how to deal with that kind of distance is all part of the growing up process. You learn how to pack yourself up and get to and from smith without parental aid, you learn how to deal with your problems and how to have fun during holidays without family. It makes you a bit stronger I think than students who have that safety net of close by parents. </p>
<p>That being said, i cannot emphasize enough the importance of NOT smothering your children with attention (not that you guys do, it's just a general piece of advice from a student perspective). Just because you can send twenty emails and chat on IM every second of the day DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT. I call home once, maybe twice a week, I do it regularly, but on my own time. I have friends who are on the phone two or three times a day, plus IM, plus emails. not good.</p>
<p>Smithieandproud, how sure were you about the move when you made it?</p>
<p>MWFN, sorry the odds were against you. But as you say, one is able to get to NoHo. (I'm typing this at Bradley Airport.)</p>
<p>I'm with S&P...one call a week and an occasional e-mail is all D has time for...her schedule is packed like a tin of sardines (What an ill-chosen metaphor.)</p>
<p>SandP, you are right about contact, but the point is, you CAN have more contact if you wish. My D has a cell phone. She knows that she can call at any time if she needs something or wants to talk. I send her occasional emails to convey facts (such as I ran into so-and-so, and she says hi, or a reminder that we'll be away for a weekend) without any obligation on her part to respond. </p>
<p>Some weeks I hear nothing from her. Other weeks I might hear two or three times, although never for long.</p>
<p>I know a student (not at Smith) whose father called her three times a day, every day. Oddly enough, the student said that she didn't mind, that it was "just Dad being Dad." My own D would disown me if I called her ONCE a day.</p>
<p>I was sure that I wanted to test myself in a new environment, and I kind of went for the challenge of living away from my parental safety net. I really think though, that the distance is not so tough on students at a school with a community. It's very hard on parents, my mom is toughing it out, but on students it's not as bad.</p>
<p>We have a rather large time difference, so I only call on Sundays, but sometimes, in (my) evening, as I am working on the computer, she skypes me. As she puts it, before bursting into torrents of French, "it's more language-sickness than homesickness". Je comprends.</p>
<p>In my experience, French is often spoken in torrents. There's a nice riff on this in the remake of "The Parent Trap." ("I didn't even know she <em>spoke</em> French.)</p>
<p>Yes, it is. But she carries this to an extreme. D's French is, to a normal French person, what Cary Grant's speech is to Gary Cooper's!</p>