“How a Mother Can Make or Break Their College Student” Oh Really?

If my mom had hired a delivery service to send me “care packages” I would have felt “snubbed by Mom”. She sent the occasional box of homemade cookies. That made me feel much more loved than a box of generic groceries.

Oh no, what if your precious boy has to drink water FROM A SINK!!! SINK WATER!!! He won’t make it through the first year.

Let your child spend more on “fun” by continuing to mask the need to purchase necessities, thus resulting in pushing the entire lesson on budgeting down the road once again.

The credit card companies WILL LOVE YOU.

No wonder college was so hard for me — my mommy didn’t love me!!! Didn’t even let me do my own laundrey. (I’d bring it home every couple of weeks. ((If it needed washing that often – LOL)))

Also Mom, off topic, but: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flies.png

Isn’t at least part of going away to college to learn to live independently? Oh well, after college mom can pick out their apartment, furnish it and keep stocking the fridge and going to job interviews with junior. Later mom will be responsible for day care and on-call for baby sitting and car pooling. Eventually grandma can look after getting the second generation helicoptered spawn into college and supplying all the stuff she did for the first generation because the first generation has no idea how to do it. I want to know what happens when granny dies.

Man, these college kids are getting so much sleep?!? That has to be a typo, the eating and drinking is really the big blue section, right???

When I was in uni, I had the exact opposite problem.

Mum. Mum. MUM. Stop sending food up with Dad every time he visits. Mum. Stop it. Do you not understand that I live with and share fridge/food storage space with other people? I do not have space in the fridge to keep the stuff you’re sending me. No I do not need shampoo. Why not? Because when I need shampoo, I BUY IT. Mum! Seriously, I am perfectly capable of buying the groceries I need when I need them! How do you think I’ve been living these past two months???

Auntie… no… quit it! I do not need you to give me five takeaway containers full of leftovers! I am not going to curl up until I die of starvation the moment I’m out of sight of an elder female of the family. NO. Dammit, I know how to buy food, I always keep food in the house and WHEN I AM HUNGRY I EAT.

And I wasn’t the only student with that problem. Quite a few people who were not living with parents/other family had similar issues – parents who, despite all logic and common sense, assumed that their offspring would literally forget/fail to buy food or other necessary groceries on a regular basis and… I dunno, die or something.

Ohmyhellno! My generation truly suffers from a depraved form of narcissism to think they must provide for another capable *adult* in this manner. Lawyers and marketers….there must be a ring of hell dedicated just for them, right?

@Double Plus Good, that was the first thing I saw, too. Water from a sink…wow.
@BMS, my wife is a professor, and she complains about the very same problems, regarding parents.

Ugh. Just looking at this makes me ill. I can’t believe anyone would think this is a good idea.

Oh for goodness sake! When exactly are this generation of young people expected to learn to fend for themselves?

When do they get to practice being adults?

Ha!! This is the exact opposite of what we will be doing for our kids when they go off to college. How sad for the college kid that can’t manage to pick up groceries or toiletries! They won’t exactly be prepared for the world.

Also, where are undergrads getting almost $800/month worth of discretionary income?

Totally ridiculous! I’m not my kids’ gopher-unless they are laid up in a total body cast! There’s a reason I taught my 2 (now adult) children how to do dishes, do laundry, clean bathrooms & even grocery shop. And why I’m teaching my 3 teens those same important life skills! Why would I want my kids to be that dependent on me? Shouldn’t I have more in my life than “doing” for my kids even after they leave home? This just makes me shake my head & wonder “why?”

I’m confused about the oral hygiene part… Does someone show up on campus to brush their teeth for them?

I never got anything from my parents after moving out to start college at 17. I had an apartment, job, and a car (which, I admit, the car was a highschool graduation gift – it was used, but reliable and came with no car payment, which was a HUGE advantage). I did my own laundry, own grocery shopping, cooked meals (no pizza and fast food) and even kept the place clean. I don’t see why so many kids can’t seem to make it once they leave home, particularly if they are living in a dorm, which is not anything like making it on your own. Maybe it was because I didn’t have any option but to make it on my own. When kids have the option of failing and running back to mom and dad, it’s too tempting to try to do otherwise. Kids, even college “kids” will take the easy way out whenever they can. It’s the parent’s responsibility to make sure the easy way out isn’t an option.

These are the same parents who will accompany their post-collegiate children on job interviews, call HR with follow-up “sales pitches” extolling their baby’s outsanding qualifications and so forth. It reminds me of the “Everybody Loves Raymond” episode where Robert (age 40) applies to work for the FBI and his mommy writes to tell them how wonderful he is.

You know, it was never hard for me as an undergrad to buy the stuff I needed. Even for the years I didn’t have a car, if someone was going to the store, I’d just hitch a ride. If I didn’t have that opportunity, there were stores on campus. They were a little pricey, but they were close by.

It blows my mind that they’re trying to sell moms on the idea that if they don’t send laundry detergent and soap to their kids, that the kid will just neglect to do laundry or shower.

omg at gap.runners video clip…. crazy mom… crazy mom. omg.

My mother certainly did not send me anything in terms of food when I was at university. Well some home-made jams and preserves. Food was lots of pasta, sausages, more pasta, noodles. There was a communal laundromat in the basement. I learned all of those life skills you need; including burning food to briquettes, to washing red socks, a classic, with the white laundry, ending up with pinkish clothes. I called my mother plenty of times on what to do with this or that but she didn’t really immerse herself in my life in that way.

I recently read an article where some post grads from a university seemed to live in a state of having gone to college as if it was prolonged high school. After graduation, they had no idea about what to do next. There was also implied that graduate school was the next step. As a given.

@ Keri: General Douglas MacArthur’s mom did this – moved and lived right across the street from her baby boy when he was at WEST POINT!

“I’m confused about the oral hygiene part… Does someone show up on campus to brush their teeth for them?”

No, no, no, it’s just that they can’t brush their teeth if someone doesn’t send them toothpaste in the mail. They’re only babies, after all.

I know, why not just keep your precious little ones at home forever so you can cater to their every whim… seriously? If I got such a thing in the mail when going to school I would have donated it to an organization to help the needy – and I worked part time/full time through the university years for my money. Who are these parents – give your head a shake and let your kids grown up.

Wow, just wow, that is so sad. This is one of the reasons college professors complain that incoming students can’t take car of themselves. Some have parents calling about grades and homework IN COLLEGE. Ads like this only serve to encourage that type of parent mentality. What is to say that if you spend almost a thousand dollars a month sending these supplies to your “child” that they are even going to use them and not sell them for beer money? Horrible that a company like this exists.

Let’s just say that a parent does want to send all that crap to thier college aged kid, is there some reason why they can’t go to the store, put that stuff in a box and mail it themselves? If you have that much extra money that you are so desperate to spend there are a lot of charities that could really use it for people that genuinely need it.

Are we raising children to be less independent than we used to? I value my since of independence so much that I’ve had to remind myself to ask for help at times. Hard to imagine not feeling that way.

The freshman weight gain stat they include is myth anyway. Geez, one of the best things about first year in college is the ability to make your own choices in things like food shopping.

I almost find it more disturbing that the company assumes the mommy isn’t capable of sending her snowflake some groceries without an expensive service.

The venture won’t be successful I’d guess. In my dorm experience guys with interfering moms were made fun of relentlessly until they got their moms to cool it.

Add me to the list of horrified people. Sadly, this isn’t the first advertisement I seen for this sort of thing. The one I’ve seen is offering to “help” busy moms who don’t have enough time to do all the shopping for their family and still package and ship everything off to the child in college in another state (the examples were basic everyday stuff). And seriously, if mom can order on-line, so can the student who knows what products are running low and which ones he loves/hates.

Where I was in college we were all very well taken care of, by my standards. All with the idea that we could focus on our studies (which were intense). Every student pitched in funds and efforts to keep things clean and keep various items freely stocked including laundry supplies, first aid, and paper. Other common extras were available for purchase in the dorm, the student organization even ran an informal but reputable bank (lots of quarters).

But having supplies doesn’t provide knowledge of how to use them…

I had one classmate, who had two nannies right up to the day he came to college. His roommate was sort of spoiled, too, but not as bad. Two weeks in he comes into the study hall shouting “I NEED A WOMAN!!!” [Insert crass jokes] Turns out neither he nor his roommate knew how to do laundry. [More crass jokes.] I and another young woman, tried to instruct them, but had to go down and actually show them. Some time later in the year I’m sitting next to this boy in an assembly and he says that he is still having problems with his laundry. That he is using the “color safe” detergent, but that everything is coming out with light blotches. Anyhow, I when down to the laundry in his dorm and took a close look at all provided detergents (none were labeled color-safe) then I spotted the “color safe” Clorox. Turns out he had been using bleach instead of detergent to ‘wash’ his clothing.

Another day he barged into my dorm room crying hysterically. He had knocked his face, had a minor cut in his mouth, and didn’t know what to do. There being nothing really to do for the injury, and coming up with no other way to calm him, I let him call his mom from my room. She immediately told him to brush his teeth… come to find out (despite being supplied) he wasn’t in the habit of brushing his teeth. Also apparently didn’t know to keep a wound clean. This despite being a good student, in a top school.

Even this boy managed to do what little shopping he needed (and a whole tone he didn’t) without mom.

There is also this thing call Amazon if you are in some rural school and can’t get to a store that isn’t an overpriced University run abomination.

It’s a pet peeve of mine to be referred to as “Mom” by anyone other than my children. That alone was a huge turnoff -not to mention the utter ridiculousness of the rest of the ad.

I lived in dorms my first year of college. I grew up with a mom who said she was raising her kids with the purpose of them being independent (Thanks Mom!). Well, most of the students in my dorm had similar-thinking parents, but there were a few guys whose parents would bring them groceries or take their laundry on the weekend. We made fun of them (the boys) for not being able to cut the apron strings. And they also stayed single the entire year. No girl wanted a Mama’s boy!
If mom’s want to be sweet then they should send cookies!

Hmmm. I probably will send my kids a few things but let them get their own groceries. They will probably be college athletes and their coach will probably micromanage their life more than I ever did.

That was my experience in college. As a NCAA track athlete my track coach knew my every move. They dictated what we ate, gave us vitamins, told us we could not party……. Of course I did my own thing but they tried! They even got my grades and talked to me about tests I may have done poorly with and set up tutors…… This was in the 80’s.

It is worse now. I sat in a seminar listening to NCAA coaches talk to our athletes telling them they expect to be friended on their FB accounts.

My parents were very free range so it was actually a very hard adjustment for me that ended badly. I transfered to an NAIA school where the coaches did not monitor my every move.

I guess I can say that these parents are at least less intrusive than most college coaches.

I can not remember how I got my soap. My mom probably bought many bars and they last forever.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with the occasional care package or with Mom sending home leftovers and maybe a few groceries on some visits. I figure that can fall under normal family helping-out-each-other.

But I’m having to show this to everyone!

I looked a bit more at the website and I have no complaint with the idea itself–seems like just another way of shopping.

But I still can’t get over this particular marketing campaign of shopping for your college students!

Strange that the graphic seems to think that water from the sink is bad but sending them bottled water is bad. What’s wrong with tap water? If its that bad couldn’t they just get a britta?

As for the rest, well I was a student at college at 18. Not only did I have to use my own money to go shipping to buy my own supplies, I also worked hard at a summer job to make that money in the first place. It never occurred to me that this was a bad thing. 10 years later, as a very confident, and independent young woman, I upped sticks and moved, alone, to the US, and then I manage to figure out how to buy my groceries here too! What are these people on for goodness sake – independence begets indepent behaviour, why not give our kids a fighting chance.

My 13-year-old son just saw this and said, “I thought that university is where you’re supposed to do everything on your own. I guess that things are different in the States.”

the entire concept that teaching your kids (er, adults in this case) independence means that you are “snubbing” them has my back up.

A good parent eventually puts themself out of a job. Now that many parents are waiting until they are older themselves to have kids I can’t even imagine that at 55-60 years old some of these parents are still making parenting a full time job when they don’t have any kids at home.

This was my ex husbands mother. This is also why we aren’t together anymore.

Sending an occasional care package (yeah, cookies or something to make them laugh) is one thing but this….wow.

My first child is almost through college…when she started we asked for the school to give her work/study as part of our financial aid, on the grounds that if both her parents were working hard to help put her through school, she should, too. We put a certain (pretty modest) amount of money in her bank account for textbooks and toiletries (that she purchased on her own—actually, not too complicated because she had done this all through high school anyway), and all her entertainment expenses and extra food come out of her own funds, which has taught her to learn to budget, because we don’t give her limitless money.

She was shocked when she moved to school when she found many, many students who not only did not know how to do their laundry but their moms would visit on family weekends and DO THE LAUNDRY FOR THEM.

I have middle-aged friends whose jobs involve hiring, and they say you can always tell the young people who have already learned to take care of themselves and the ones who haven’t—as this bunch are passive, feel entitled without paying dues, tend to complain more than others, and, yes, seem helpless when there’s any sort of pressure.

I don’t understand what favors these parents think they are doing for their kids…

The graphics make the college kids look like overweight kids anyway. Seems like they could use the exercise to get to the store and get their own supplies.
And why is this to Moms? If your going to lay on another guilt trip, it better not be for an 18 year-old ADULT. I’m up to my eyeballs in childhood guilt trips already.

@Tonya: You bring up a good point: when I did a study abroad in Germany, I was able to figure out how to buy groceries there. I even had to go to the doctor two days after setting foot in the country, and I managed that, too. (Definitely different than in the States, let me tell you, so that was cool to experience.)

Seriously, though, it would never have occurred to me to have my parents send me…well, anything but the occasional letter when I was abroad (this was before my parents were comfortable with email). My parents paid for my plane ticket, I bought everything else. They picked up the tab for my phone card, though.

@Anna, I’ve wondered the same thing – that this helicopter parenting might actually be yet another way people are competing with each other, i.e., who can be the “best” mom, that they have wrapped their own egos up in this completely, and that the kid(s) is just an afterthought, if their needs are even considered at all. It isn’t really about doing the best for your child, it’s about being seen to be the “best” mom.

Another blog mentioned it… more positively. Good grief.

http://reviewedbymom.blogspot.com/2012/07/take-care-of-your-college-student-with.html

Note to self…along with handing over laundry duties to my kids when they’re 12, turn over the buying of their own toiletries so I don’t have to do it when they go to college. Got it.

Reblogged this on After the kids leave and commented:
We’re reblogging this here for your edification and enlightenment, without comment. We’d love to hear from you: what do you think? Would you ever consider using this service for your kids? Is this the ultimate in helicopter parenting, or just an extension of the time-honoured “care package”? How would your kids react if you were to sign up for this kind of service?

@ Sarah – Life is too expensive a lesson to fail. Frankly, I’m not sinking a dime into college for an 18 year old who can’t manage to get herself out of bed and to class on time as it doesn’t bode well for her future employment prospects. Well before college, I expect to contribute nothing to my child getting prepared for school other than making sure she has a functioning alarm clock.

I don’t think this attitude has anything to do with money. I think it has everything to do with not wanting to be out of a job. If you teach your children to live without you, you are out of a job.

I’ve said it before but I think that this whole helicopter trend is a result of readily available, extremely effective birth control. Kids are no longer viewed as the byproduct of a healthy marriage to be integrated into the existing family unit. They are these highly desired, worked for, planned for, well-thought out products that are the complete focus of the family unit. Not saying that children of previous generations were not adored and their parents not dedicated. Just that the attitude is different towards something you get by chance compared to something you spent several years planning for, discussing and setting up your life just so to have.

During my freshman year of college, I lived in the dorms and ate in the dining hall.

And this may be different from other schools.

The private college that I attended required freshmen to live in the dorms and have at least a “3 meal plan” at the dining hall. There were three reasons for this:

1. The school made money.
2. The school didn’t want to provide kitchens for the students–no cooking in the dorms.
3. They wanted to make sure that the kids at least had a roof over their head and 3 squares a day for the first year while they sorted things out.

And this was back in the 1970s.

Now, after freshman year, kids would usually stay in the dorms because, hey, they’re conveniently located. Living off-campus wasn’t necessarily amazingly cheaper unless you stacked four kids in a 1 bedroom apartment. They might drop their meal plan or adjust it to 1 meal. Some would move off campus or into fraternities/sororities.

So I could imagine something like this being useful, if you weren’t living in the dorms for freshman year.

Donna, I agree with you about the planned children thing.

This is disgraceful. Sham on any mother who would use this service. Let threshold mature through responsibility.

Regarding Sarah’s friend’s daughter, I’d counter that I think there are some kids who need to fail in order to have these things matter to them. I do think that colleges shouldn’t fail students out after their first semester. But by the time they get to college, most students have spent much of their lives in a minimum-security prsion environment. They’ve had to ask every time they needed to go to the bathroom, and the teacher had the power to say yes or no. If they weren’t precisely where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there, all hell broke loose. They’ve been tested and experimented on like lab rats. For some kids, it’s hard not to let the freedom go to their heads. Others just need to see what else is out there.

The friend above who gave the laundry lesson grew up at the end of a dirt road in a rural town with really strict parents who never let her do anything. She moved into a dorm bustling with kids her own age onto a campus that offered a million diversions from a cut-rate pool room in the student center to keg parties on Tuesday nights and beyond. She was smart, funny, passionate and really had a lot to offer the college, but they failed her out after one semester. She started to get her act together towards the end, but it was too late by then.

I guess my mother hated my guts. All she did was teach me how to wash dishes (age 6), do my own laundry (age 8), cook (age 8), pick up after myself (probably started at age 2, but definitely at age 4), good hygiene practices (about age 4), write checks (age 13 or 14, plus I took an accounting class in high school), and a host of other things that helped me to become self sufficient. Never once did she send me a care package in college. I don’t know how I made it being raised by such a selfish person (sarcasm).

I agree with the smaller family thing too. Also with smaller families is less time out of your life spent parenting. Early generations tended to have several kids spread out over many years. So from birth of the first kid until last kid moves out could be 30+ years of active parenting. Today, with the average of 2 kids 2-3 years apart, you are really only looking at 20-21 years of active parenting between birth of number 1 and high school graduation of number 2.

And the kids tend to all be in the same stage of life. Instead of sending your oldest off to college with elementary school age children still at home, you have a kid in college and a kid about to be in college – neither of whom should really need much from you – so you have the time and energy to lavish attention on the college student.

Surely this is actually a joke – the graphics, the silly emotional crap and the fact that they sent it to Lenore (didnt they, or did I read it wrong?) all gives the impression that it’s some kind of ‘punking’ thing. If it is actually real, I’m jealous – wish I’d thought of it first!

Loved the stuff above from different posters about having to teach others how to do laundry too. I did have to learn how to do laundry at the hostel dorms, I must confess, because they had these amazing machines that washed and dried in one, and they were automatic too. My family used a wringer washing machine (darn those things were excellent – I still miss ours!) and of course used a washing line, so I was a bit hopeless to begin with – it was a bit too space age for me, LOL! We managed to get a wringer when we went flatting though, and draining was great fun, as the mangle was hand operated. You could stretch towels and sheets all the way along the bench, though you did have to make sure the cat didn’t get tangled in them in the process….Oooo, nostalgia.

I don’t think the size or makeup of the actually family at issue is as relevant as the overall attitude toward parenting in society. Parenting – particularly mothering – is now a competitive sport. If the bar of what it takes to be considered a “good” parent moves higher, you have to do whatever you can to step up to meet the bar, even if it means that you never sleep and you are babying your college student.

When I left home and went to college my parents didn’t do much of anything for me. I knew very well once I hit 18 and left I was on my own, and I like that. learned to take care of myself, pay my own bills…and when I had no place to live it was *my* responsibility to find somewhere. My college was 2 hours away from home, what were my parents supposed to do? Spend gas money to come help me look? What would that accomplish? I certainly never expected them to help me with everything. Not because they are horrible, but because I was 20 years old and perfectly capable of living my own life.

By comparison, my husband and other friends…their parents did EVERYTHING for them for those 4-5 years of college. Paid for everything, any problem that arose they had to call their mommy. When my husband needed to go to the ER his sophomore year he seriously called his mom to make the 2 hr drive there and take him rather than wake his roommate and ask him to drive him. the insane part is, she did!(Maybe I am horrible but if my college kid ever calls me from hours away and says they need to go to the ER I’m gonna be saying “Well I guess you’d better find a friend or call an ambulance!”) It took me YEARS to teach my husband how to be confident and independent from his mother and and cut the apron strings, and my MIL fought me tooth and nail over it. But trust me that’s a whole other long involved story.

I’m 26 now and I know how to cook, clean, handle the finances, and still never have to ask my parents for anything. Except to babysit sometimes.

And all my other friends who depended on their parents all through college and never had to do anything to help themselves? Every single one of them has graduated years ago and lives…with their parents! Amazing!

Soooo happy my parents snubbed me!

I also had to teach folks in grad school how to do just about everything. One of my grad school friends was 30. She’d always lived with her parents and had servants. She had no idea how to do anything. She did learn readily, but it boggled my mind. I could have done every domestic job in the house by age 12 – most much sooner.

I did want to add that where I went to grad school, there was no place to buy groceries unless you (a) had access to a car or (b) shopped at this dirty “food co-op” that only had bins of scary-looking flour and other exotic stuff. I think the city might have had a deal with the school to force more students onto the meal plans (which were ridiculously priced). So I was on the meal plan for the first couple of years. Which makes me wonder – don’t colleges offer meal plans any more for students who are not considered responsible enough? (I think it might have been required for undergrads where I went.)

When I was a kid we didn’t have a washer and dryer at home (old farmhouse; no place for one), and because my mom was a working woman, she dropped it off at the laundromat for their washing service. So the second week in college a large football player at our Big Ten school helped me figure out the washing machine (because I had no problems reading the detergent instructions). It might have been an amusing twist, since I was a girl……. I bought all my toiletries ahead of time, on sale, using my own hard-earned summer job money and double coupons (up to $1 off, back in the early 80’s). Put my stash in an underbed box. – it was nice to not have to pay campus store prices. This ad is a good reminder of why I endeavor to teach my children (who tend toward little-professor absent-mindedness) about life and how to get along in it.

I didn’t get care packages from my parents in college, nor did I get financial support. They taught me how to cook and clean and take care of myself. They called me several times a week to see how I was doing. They sent me emails. But they let me do college on my own. When I graduated, I moved to my own apartment several states away where I knew nobody in order to teach elementary school. Something most of my college peers couldn’t do because they were too afraid and didn’t know how to take care of themselves. Best experience of my life, living on my own away from family. And I loved being the chef among my roommates, even though I really wasn’t that great at cooking. I knew how; they didn’t. Made me sort of a hero in the apartment complex.

“Incubating a kid’s whole being to support the parents’ dreams seems a bit sick to me”

Agree SKL. I visited a forum in which a parent defended his hovering, saying he was doing it because a good life wasn’t enough for his child, he wanted it to be awesome! But isn’t that up to the child? And isn’t everyone’s definition of awesome different? I know people who got married and started having kids at 18 because that was their dream. I know others who are childless world travelers with PhDs that would also describe their lives as awesome. I know professional musicians, career military people, stay-at-home mothers, nurses, EMTs, and writers who are all following their dreams.

And besides, at some point, it’s up to the kid. People aren’t recipies. You can’t combine a dash of this, a cup of that, several teaspoons of something else, bake at 450 for 18 years and automatically get a successful, well-adjusted human being. Some kids take all the love and support they’ve received and drive it right into a wall. Others succeed and find happiness despite terrible backgrounds. You only have to look at the variation among adult siblings in various families to see this. I would imagine that hovering over a child, micromanaging their entire lives, just makes everyone miserable, without guarantee of results. If I ever have children, I plan to mostly just do my best to love them and to make sure everyone enjoys the time while they’re growing up.

I think I did my first load of laundry in college. My mother told me to read the tags, organize by temperature, then separate by color, and just throw everything of the same color in on cold/cold to save money if the loads were small. She also told me to get the cheap powder detergent and dissolve some in a cup before putting it into the water, and to be very careful if I decided to use bleach. I think the laundry room on our floor provided cups for measuring and dissolving detergent. Frankly I had the most trouble figuring out how to load the coin slots. It isn’t rocket science.

Further anecdata: Both my first roomie and I had Issues. My family cut me loose with basic instructions and occasionally mailed me this and that. Hers had her home every weekend and she never even washed her own clothes. One of us found a support group and a shrink and the other ended up on suicide watch and dropped out. I’m not saying that having to do your own laundry is of vital psychological importance, but being cradled at the age of 18 didn’t prevent her breakdown.

People talk about Boy Scouts and focus on outdoor skills but they miss these other life skills.

My boy scouts are required to shop for thier patrols for monthly campouts — the patrol must draw up a menu, create a shopping list and make it fit their budget… the kid who does the shopping has to figure out what to do when they can’t afford what’s on their list. (ie. the chicken is too expensive, we’ll go with ground beef or oranges are too expensive let’s buy bananas!)

They are also required to scrub the heck out of their patrol cookware.

Boys enter Boy Scouts at ~age 11 …

And our troop has a very high eagle ratio — which means a lot of boys taking Personal Finance merit badge – which is a requirement for earning Eagle.

@skl, according to the research I’m looking into on gifted kids at the moment as part of my diploma, you’re pretty much right about the smarts thing. Determination on the part of the individual with the smarts though is still vital for those smarts to be of any use. And how you get determination from being babied is beyond me.
That said, two out of three of my kids probably will stay at home while they atte uni,because the university we have locally is perfect for their stated preference. I will just have to make sure that I have stopped doing a lot for them by then, which shouldn’t be too hard as they do a lot now. Typically Asian kids do stay home until they get married, but they are adults within their parental home and share housework, expenses etc. We’re lucky in that we have lots of good examples among our friends for the kids to follow.

“Freshman are much more likely to wash their hands after using the restroom- probably because mom’s advice is still fresh in their minds!”

What kind of crap is that?!!? That whole thing is total rubbish! Seriously, where do they come up with this stuff? Are they polling or counting these so called adults when they are using the restrooms? If handwashing after using a restroom isn’t automatic by age 8, we have a bigger problem than not being able to buy toiletries and food on their own.

I did receive a few care packages in college. They were… fun stuff. Gifts. Some candy, a cute t-shirt, fun socks. Stuff I wouldn’t buy for myself because I was a starving college student working an early morning janitorial job in order to pay for rent, food, and hygiene.

The funny thing being is that my mom doesn’t send many care packages any more. Speaking of the aforementioned large family/small family thing, I come from a good ol’ Utah Mormon family of seven children. Years ago a family tradition among us kids was to go work at a Scout Camp every summer… at which the minimum employment age is… 14. My brothers started this first, and were given plenty of care packages. Over the years and a few Scout Camp-employed children later, care packages are a rare thing. Maybe Mom got bored, but no one seems to mind. But when there were care packages, they also consisted of… fun stuff. Not basic necessities that we were expected to get on our own (at Scout camp, it’s easy–They feed you).

The fun stuff is that at the age 14 minimum for Scout Camp work, you are expected to do a lot of stuff. They provide you a tent to sleep in and you get to eat the food, but part of your job is looking presentable. NO ONE did laundry for us. You were expected to have a clean uniform (usually dirty at the end of the day) each morning. The camp we worked at had some washing and drying machines and even provided laundry soap. It was still your responsibility to do laundry. Oh, and you were supposed to be clean. And there were showers! If a fourteen-year-old couldn’t figure out where to get soap or couldn’t find someone to explain the mysteries of the washing machine, they usually didn’t last long–because kids like that usually aren’t responsible.

Honestly, working at Scout Camp is something I highly recommend. You are expected to be responsible as a teenager. Wow.

Holy schnikeys, I just realized–the designers may have meant to give their characters a Japanese-style “chibi” look, but really they look more like fatlings! Creeeeepy. (Fatlings are cute baby aliens from Dr. Who. They are created by making adult humans shrink and melt away. Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud to the front counter . . . )

Delightfully ludicrous! Because college students really need to keep their money to spend on alcohol and drugs instead, right?

My mum used to give me frozen meals from home the first couple of years at uni. Even then, I remember having to eat dry rice for dinner because I’d spent all my money on “fun”. It was an excellent lesson in budgetting indeed.

Yeah, I actually snub my 5yos regularly. Every time they ask me to play a kiddy thing with them. That’s what they have siblings and friends for. And every time they ask me to do something that would give them an unnecessary boost or advantage. Snub city! I guess I’m getting them ready for the horrid neglect they have ahead of them.

Now that they have mandated dorms for freshmen at our local uni, my daughter will likely live at home for her first year. I completely understand wanting to strike out on your own into an apartment, even if close to home. I see no point in paying for a dorm and a meal plan when there is a house and a full kitchen within walking distance. Based on the needs of helicopter parents, I bet the dorms will be much more restrictive than living at home for my kid by the time she gets to college.

I guess some schools are much more centered on dorms. Only freshmen and international students lived in our dorms, and only some of them, when I was in school. Now most freshmen are made to live in dorms but upperclassmen are still a rarity and grad students other than international students are unheard of. The vast majority of the students live off campus. I hope that means there is some basic life skills proficiency happening in Georgia.

@ebohlman – I think it is a combo. The trend has been building for decades. I was born in 1970 and my brother in 1984. He was more free range than kids today but less free range than me.

I think smaller well-planned families headed by older professional parents with financial resourses (yuppies) started to really change the parenting landscape in the 80s and it has slowly gotten worse through mompetition.

@Donna – you make an interesting observation about the local students being more self-sufficient in your town. That was true in my experience, too. I mostly ended up being friends with other “townies”. We all ended up working together over the summers, as we had various jobs around campus and we needed the money to support ourselves, most of us coming from similar socio-economic backgrounds.

A good portion of the student population where I went to school came from very wealthy backgrounds, and summers were spent “summering”. Or, as I remember one woman telling me when I was on my lunch break from work, “Everyone should take time off and follow Phish around for the summer.” I didn’t bother to point out that 1. I had to work, and 2. even if I hadn’t had to work, I had no interest in Phish for one concert, let alone an entire summer of them.

I can’t believe this, but I’m not surprised. I live in a college town and see a lot ot students that still depend on mom and dad for everything. A good example of this is when I was working a midnight “Welcome to College” sale and one young lady didn’t want to buy a new pair of shoes (that she didn’t really need) but didn’t want to use her own money but mom’s! I really had to control my tounge on that one since I wanted to tell her what I thought about that.

But on the flip side there are a lot of kids who work really hard to help pay for college (and rent AND groceries etc.) Goodness they go out and (SHOCK SHOCK!!!) get a part time job to help defray those costs, and they still get good grades and graduate!!! Guess those parents are terrible expecting their kids to help themselves.

@AW13 – A few of the townies in my area still managed to find ways to follow Phish and Widespread Panic around for the summer. But this is Athens, GA where Indy bands are a religion for some.

@SKL – Interesting. We were in college around the same time and yet our schools were vastly different. Coming from poor artist parents, UGA was a forgone conclusion for me for undergrad and I just didn’t spend much time looking at other schools when in high school to really register differences. Grad school was after a several year break so I was in a different world anyway.

I think my almost 2yr old has more responsibility than these college kids. I am not kidding!

He knows how to put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket, and dirty dishes in the sink, and also does the laundry, rinses dishes, and loads dishwasher (supervised, but does all the work himself). He also puts his toys away, carries light groceries home, takes small bags of trash to the dumpster, brushes his teeth (after I brush them), brushes his hair, fetches me things, and helps push his sisters stroller. AND HE IS NOT EVEN TWO. (next month is his birthday) We call this “being part of the family”, every member must contribute.

I may not be the best parent, but my kids will be able to take care of themselves.

My closest friend in college did still live at home with her father. She decided to change her major her senior year so was on the 6 year plan, needed to pay her own tuition for the last 2 years and didn’t want to pay rent too. At 23, she was still telling her father that she was staying at my house whenever she spent the night at a guy’s house. She just couldn’t bring herself to openly admit to her father that she was having sex. I was happy when she finally graduated and became my roommate. At least then, I knew that I wouldn’t be getting a phone call from some family member looking for her in an emergency when I didn’t even know she was “spending the night at my house” and had no idea where she was.

So for those of you contemplating your children living at home during college, you will likely need to address the issue of relationships. Or at least encourage a cellphone to help out the scapegoats.

It doesn’t get much better post-grad. My husband teaches law. He, too, gets calls from parents. These “kids” are over 21. Only one so far has had the grace to be completely horrified and embarrassed about the parental harassment.

Christina, when I was in college, some of the teachers used to go to our parents to talk about us (they were pursuing associate degrees at the same time, and had some of the same teachers). My parents were offended on our behalf. They didn’t even attend parent-teacher meetings when we were in high school. I would never dream of asking them to intervene with a teacher, even though they might have had a good rapport etc.

Is there any written policy anywhere that basically spells out the boundaries for both parents and teachers in college and beyond?

“I was on my own dime once in college, but I do believe that if you’re being supported by your parents, you need to be using the support to do what they intend.”

I agree to a certain extent. Kids need to spend their parents money for what is intended, and parents have a right to put there foot down and refuse to pay for something against their own values. But Parents also need to accept that they are giving money to ADULTS who should have some freedom to make their own choices as long as the general plan – a college education – is progressing nicely. Parents either want to pay for college or they don’t, but purse strings shouldn’t be used as a way to micromanage and manipulate your adult kids’ lives from afar.

There is a difference to me between “I don’t believe in cohabitation and will not pay for an apartment for you to live in with your boyfriend/girlfriend” and saying “I’ll cut off all funding for college if you have sex before marriage.”

Admittedly, I wouldn’t have minded an occasional care package. I received a supermarket giftcard for $100 on one birthday, and thought it fabulous. So practical! During the first year of university my bestie and I sent each other care packages (we were in different states, both a very long way from anyone we had ever known before, the nearest person known to my parents, to be called if I ran into serious trouble, was 200kms away. Never did call.). I would send favourite snack foods (like oreos!), and received my favourite soft drink, unobtainable in the new state. As well as different little knick knacks we found. It was just such a great way to be reminded of “home” when we were both so far away. And I will never forget the time a flatmates mother came to visit and brought with her half a cow. She knew we had a chest freezer, and that it was running low. We donated the really good quality meat around all the poor students we were friends with. Again, a fabulous thoughtful gift, that lasted a very long time.
BUT, as a regular thing? It would lose its thoughtfulness and specialness.

The funny thing is that I never got a single care package in college but now everyone in my office – the youngest ringing in at 36 – gets them regularly. Life on an island means many things we enjoyed back in the states are not readily available. Walmart.com comes in handy, but most food can’t be commercially shipped via Hawaii (where all our mail comes from) so in steps mom. My last care package contained flavored rice mixes, sudafed, natural peanut butter, and bagel chips.

The cargo plane comes in over the weekend so Mondays are like Christmas at the office. You never know who is going to have a box and what it will contain. I imagine that it is equally as exciting if you are in college. So maybe it’s just the marketing that sucks.

@Merrick
My son’s boy scout troop also has the kids make up the shopping list for the campouts but with a twist. The scoutmaster does the shopping, but buys ONLY and EXACTLY what is on the list. So if they forgot that cereal requires milk, then everyone eats dry cereal. Excellent way to make boys pay attention to detail.

My kids went to kung fu camp last week. The bunk house had sheets and blankets folded on the end of each bed. Several kids had no idea how to apply them to the mattress. My kids, no problem! Long live snubbing!

Wow…this is just ridiculous. I understand helping support your college student financially in some ways. I know I needed it then. And my parents did. But they also expected me to be responsible with what they gave me. They were not about to do my laundry, shop for my food, and such. This is basically saying that the government allows a child to become an adult at 18…but they can’t be responsible for themselves.

Donna — exactly. There’s nothing wrong with a care package if it’s just a fun way to provide a treat or a way to say “I’m taking a little time and effort to send you some stuff because I wanted to do something extra for you.” That’s why I buy the “healthy treat” packages the college makes available (as a fundraiser for student activities) at exam times, and once in a great while, I’ll send a little stuff at other times. But that’s a far cry from “This is the only way your kids will know you love them, and their teeth will rot otherwise.” So I think it’s a combination of the marketing, and the content. These aren’t hard to get things or specially “treatful” things (on the whole), they’re basic necessities.

I honest to goodness with every fiber of my being thought this was a spoof. Some kind of joke. I am just plain stunned that this is an actual, real thing… what is this world coming to??

Sell questionable services to parents through fearmongering. They’re doing it right. Outside of a few rare cases like unique snowflake, what most kids need is to learn to take care of themselves. Other kids won’t play with you due to questionable hygeine? Learn to get clean or go live in mom’s basement. Simple as that. I can absolutely tell you just because you send it, doesn’t mean they will use it. I was a poor kid on scholarship at a privilaged private college. Thirty years ago most of my classmates had daddy’s credit card, a new beemer high school graduation present, and discretionary spending cash of less than $1000 a month was unheard of. I made extra cash cleaning, doing laundry, and ironing for people in my dorm as most of them had no clue how just maintain themselves and their things. These were kids who’s parents sent them wads of cash and boxes full of gourmet foods. Still ended up eating ramen whenever dad would get mad about how much they were ringing up on the credit card to eat fancy hamburgers and pizza while drinking beer in excess.

I would consider myself a failure as a parent if my kids need a product like this at age 18.