Eat your vegetables, and be careful at frat parties, too
Do you remember when your parents told you to eat all your vegetables, brush your teeth, and always pack an extra pair of underwear? According to a recent article in the Kansas City Star, more incoming college students are starting to answer “yes.” While parents may feel that their advice falls on deaf ears, the article entitled, “Heading off to college can be painful for students, and parents, Too,” reported that students are more likely to take parents’ advice into consideration than ever before. In doing so, many find that they develop a better relationship with those people across the country that reared them.
“I think that students now are more likely to turn to parents’ advice than they were ten years ago,” said Karen Levin Coburn, Washington University assistant vice chancellor of students and co-author of “Letting Go: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding the College Years.” “Parents have been more involved in their children’s upbringing, and that involvement tends to continue into college. Students may say they don’t like hearing advice, or act like they’re not listening, but they end up bringing a lot of the grounding from their parents with them to college,” she continued.
Coburn also attributes the newfound attention paid to advice to increased opportunities for communication. Students have access to everything from e-mail to instant messengers to long distance phone calls, making it easier to keep in touch with their parents back home. Additionally, many students have started seeing their parents not as their “old man/woman,” but instead as friends they can talk to and confide in.
“I talk to my parents pretty much every day,” Freshman Nivedita Kulkarni said. “We talk about how classes are going, how they are, how my brother is. It’s easy to talk to them.”
Students have not only started listening more, but many freshmen have found that the absence of their parents truly does make the heart grow fonder.
As freshman Barrington Lloyd put it, “Now that I’m gone, my dad’s cool points have gone through the roof.”
Coburn predicts the trend continue will to grow throughout the years. “Seniors will say their relationship with their parents is a lot different than it was freshman year. Often they say that things are a lot better, and they’re much closer.”
At the same time, however, most college students have an opposite urge tugging at their sleeves-the desire to be independent, break all ties, and show their parents that they can survive without any help at all. After all, shouldn’t an independent college student have the ability to function self-sufficiently, without any help?
Definitely not, Coburn explains. “It’s most important for freshmen to understand that being independent doesn’t mean doing everything by yourself; we’re all interdependent. Whether asking advice from parents, getting a tutor, or talking to counselors, that’s being a responsible adult. Parents feel reassured if they hear students say, ‘I’m independent, but I need your opinion.’”
One student summarized the problem through a skit at Parents’ Orientation, “Sometimes we want [our parents'] advice and sometimes we don’t. The challenge is, we won’t tell you when.”
In the midst of this confusion, the key to a healthy parent-student relationship is compromise. Both students and parents must find a balancing point that provides the correct amount of parent-child interaction.
Freshman Margot Dankner has lived through the perils of finding this balance point. All the advice and stories she received made her think, “My parents are trying to vicariously relive their college experience through me.”
Nevertheless, Dankner still appreciates some of the advice her parents have given her. “They told me to talk to my professors, and I’ve started doing that,” she said.
Just as Dankner did, parents and students need to find a middle ground. While present-day students may be more apt to take their parents’ advice, it does not mean that they need parents checking if they’ve done their laundry. Instead, Coburn suggests that parents step back and realize that their student is becoming a different person. As for the students, a phone call home every now and then can go a long way.
While they may be five or 5,000 miles away, Washington University freshmen have kept in mind the people they spent the last 18 years with. They may be old, but they may know a thing or two.
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