Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
>> Before your child heads to college, talk about what would be a reasonable amount of contact. Levels will vary from family to family, so find an amount that will be comfortable for parents and student alike.
>> Avoid trying to solve roommate, coursework or other problems. Ask your child what she or he thinks is the best solution. Suggest seeking guidance from an appropriate person on campus such as a residence hall adviser or professor.
>> Too many calls to chat about the weather or the latest movie you saw can distract students. The time they spend chatting with you means less time for them to make new friends or experience other parts of college life.
Source: Barbara Hofer, Middlebury College
The text messages kept popping up.
As college dorm coordinator Brandi Sestak counseled a freshman on roommate troubles, the girl's mom kept texting her daughter: Point out the time your roommate borrowed your shower flip-flops. What about when her boyfriend spent the night?
“I felt like there were three people in the room,” said Sestak, who works at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln.
Armed with freshly charged iPhones and unlimited texting plans, parents are intertwined more than ever in the lives of their college-age children. The contact has amped up over the last few years as even tech-challenged moms and dads have learned to punch in the right letters and hit “send” or navigate Facebook.
Parents, in turn, get a play-by-play of college life.
The rat-a-tat-tat covers chitchat: It's hot today, ate pizza for lunch. Or heavier matters: I want to drop calculus, can't figure out my student loan.
Sestak and other college administrators say it's great that parents and kids are communicating. But they worry that a constant flow becomes a crutch for young adults, lessening the chance they graduate with self-reliance along with that college degree.
Local college officials know of students who have 25 contacts per week with parents, although the count for most is typically less.
Barbara Hofer, a psychology professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, co-authored “The iConnected Parent.” A study she completed in 2008 showed that students at Middlebury and the University of Michigan communicated with their parents about 13 times per week, mainly through cell phone calls and e-mails.
The count likely has risen in the past two years, she said, as texting has grown more popular. Seventy-five percent of teens now own cell phones, up from 45 percent six years ago, according to the Pew Research Center.
Parents in another study by Hofer reported calling home about once per week when they were in college, keeping the time short because long-distance charges were high.
But times have changed, and so have mom and dad.
Not only is technology at the ready, but these boomer parents didn't balk at shuttling their third-grader to soccer, dance and violin lessons — all in one night — or hesitate to help their seventh-grader build a solar system replica.
These parents, Hofer said, heard over and over from teachers and schools: Stay involved.
“We shouldn't expect (they'd) turn that off once their student is in college,” said Tanya Winegard, associate vice president for student services at Creighton University.
College presents all sorts of challenges — the night-owl roommate, the confounding chemistry class — and students need to talk about it with mom and dad, Hofer said.
Problems arise, she said, when parents provide a steady stream of reminders and instructions: Finish your homework, set your alarm, pick this class, don't join that club.
Bill Deeds, an administrator at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, tells parents during summer registration that students must learn to make decisions and solve their own problems.
“It's part of the development we want to see,'' he said.
Paul Williams, a Wesleyan senior from Omaha, said his parents have struck the right balance.
He's in contact with his mom about 15 times per week by text messages, calls and e-mails. They talk about his girlfriend, his Ultimate Frisbee club, his physics class.
But his parents let him fend for himself when it comes to his classes and other responsibilities.
Williams, 21, remembers calling his parents his freshman year because he was struggling with a chemistry class. His parents gave him simple advice: Talk to the professor.
Sometimes students want their parents to do the talking.
Doug Zatechka, the longtime University of Nebraska-Lincoln housing director, remembers when a student didn't get the room she wanted.
She frowned, punched a few buttons on her cell phone and handed it to the housing staff member who had delivered the bad news. Tell my mom why I didn't get the room, the student demanded.
In the days of weekly calls, the student probably would have resolved the problem and simmered down by the time she talked to her parents, Hofer said. Cell phones, unfortunately, offer immediate connections that can pull parents in and heighten the drama.
Noreen Placek said it's sometimes tough to resist calling her son, Rob, 20, a Creighton junior.
She and her husband agreed before Rob left that they would resist flooding him.
“I didn't want our son to feel smothered,'' said Placek, who lives in Alliance, Neb.
And, she said, “I've got other stuff to do. I've got a life.”
Contact the writer:
444-1122, michael.oconnor@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
