When I first left for college, I rarely called home. Not because I didn’t want to, but because it really just kept slipping my mind to call home on a weekly basis.
Needless to say my family back home became restless and demanded to hear more from me.
They needed to know what I was doing, where I was, who I was hanging with…
Once I got used to calling them every Sunday, I began calling them more than once throughout the week.
I began establishing an adult relationship with my parents and to be honest, it was pretty nice.
However, as the promising stress of college life began to pile on, I’d miss a call here and there which (you guessed it), didn’t lay right with my parents.
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But then I got to thinking—I’m doing all the calling. No one was calling me! This one way street started to put a ware on our newly established, adult relationship.
There are positive ways to help maintain that parent/student relationship without feeling like your parents are trying to place a microscope over your life.
Allow your parents to question you.
It’s OK if your parents have questions—it’s natural. As a parent, they’re just doing what parents do best and that is to make sure that you are safe.
Some students may think it’s the “it” thing to do to resent their parents, but I highly suggest you keep in close connections with them. If anything happens to you, you want you parents to be the first to know.
Allow your parents to visit.
There’s nothing wrong with visitations. Again, your parents are just checking up on you, especially if you’re a freshman.
If they start making too many trips to come visit you, than that’s where the problem comes in. You’re in college not only for an education, but for that adulthood experience.
This is your chance to grow up and become a responsible, dependent adult.
The phone works both ways.
As mentioned before, I ended up calling my parents all the time and they rarely called me. The phone works both ways.
If you find yourself calling your parents all the time and they’re not calling you enough, let them know.
If the phone thing isn’t working between you guys, maybe you can try to set up a phone schedule. It sounds a bit remedial, but it’ll make sure that both parties are calling each other.
Plan on going home.
Once some students get used to the college lifestyle, they establish a whole new life. When that happens, less and less trips are being made to go home.
Plan on going back home from time to time like on major holidays and a week over the Summer.
It may take some time for your parents to get used to this, but once you’ve obtained other responsibilities in college, it becomes hard to go home whenever you want.
When you move away to college, it may seem at first that your parents are constantly nagging you and dipping in your business all the time.
