It’s November, and it has been three months since you paid that massive tuition bill and sent your child away to college.
Unless you reared one of those really clingy kids, or you bought a condo in his college town so you keep helicoptering over him, you have hardly heard from that child since, right?
That’s possibly a good thing. It could mean that Bubba or Bubbette is having a great school year with high grades and many productive new activities to help them develop into fine adults. You wouldn’t expect them to interrupt their progress for long chats with you.
But you notice that they certainly don’t write, and even with cellphones fused to their hands, they don’t call home much.
When they do, their monosyllabic answers to your questions about life at school drive you crazy. You get “yep” “nope,” “uhhh,” “guess so” and “gotta go.” (They can, however, go into full and graphic detail about how much money you need to send.)
My advice is to leave well enough alone. If you stay in touch during this period of your kids’ lives, you may hear some things that suck the wind out of you and turn your hair white. Look at mine.
Several times when my son was in college, we got the late night call from him — “Hey! Guess where I am!” It usually wasn’t where he was supposed to be, and I always wished he hadn’t felt the need to check in and scare me.
But if you just must know what your uncommunicative child is up to, my second advice is that you design “interactive stationery” she can use. I assume Bubbette has notified you of a mailing address so that you can send cash. So strap a dollar bill to the outside of the package to entice her to open it and forward this stationery that she can simply fill out and return to you. Since she’s probably never written a letter and would be fuzzy about the process, this will give her a starting point. Also, this eliminates your having to hear her actual voice on the phone and worry about how she sounds.
Use a format that resembles the test-taking style she is accustomed to for her online tests. All she has to do is to check the most appropriate answer. Surely your college student can manage that.
You might create categories such as the following to get the news from your child:
My classes at school
1.__ are meeting, according to my friends who actually attend.
2.__are hard to find, but I’ll keep trying.
3.__were hard, so I dropped most of them, but I’ll try to take one or two next semester.
Mom, my dorm room is
1.__ clean, for once.
2.__considered the “party room”! Cool!
3.__condemned, by order of the Health Dept.
Dad, I could really use some help with
1.__getting my car out of the campus police impound. The fines are mounting.
2.__that “Birds and Bees” talk you said we’d have one day.
3.__this jail thing. It wasn’t my fault.
My bank /Venmo account is
1.__empty.
2.__overdrawn
(There is no third choice for college students.)
By the way, thanks for the credit card you gave me. I find it
1.__useful for essentials like pizza deliveries and concert tickets.
2.__in my roommate’s wallet pretty often.
3.__maxed out, but don’t worry! I applied for another one and got it! Hope it’s okay that I listed you as “responsible party.”
You wanted me to get involved in school activities. I volunteered as a research subject in
1.__a drug abuse study
2.__a co-ed living project.
3.__Both of the above.
Folks, you’ve heard of gaining the Freshman 15, but you’ll be amazed when you see me because
1.__I skipped ahead to gain the Sophomore 30.
2.__it’s true what they say about fast food and obesity.
3.__ At Thanksgiving I’ll be the one wearing the suit made by Omar the Tentmaker.
At my highly paid adviser’s suggestion, I finally declared a major that I think will make me a lot of money when I get out of school. It’s
1.__studies in self-esteem.
2.__music appreciation.
3.__revolutionary tactics and bomb making.
And don’t worry. My grades are
1.__about what you’d expect for someone with my busy social life.
2. __nothing to write home about, so I won’t.
3.__not causing me to lose any sleep, but perhaps you expected me to pass a class while I am here? Hey! I still have two weeks to pull my average up to passing. I got it under control, folks!
Using this interactive stationery with your kids will ease their communication burden, since they don’t do that very well and need the practice. And it will provide you with answers to parents’ most commonly asked questions.
And if the answers give you a heart attack, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
