Eight Decisions You and Your College Student Should Make Before College Begins

June 24, 2019August 12, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

The summer before your student heads to college is a busy time. There may be an orientation for your student, and for you. There are things to buy for the new dorm room. Your student may be contacting their roommate. There are doctor and dentist appointments to make, forms to complete, financing to finalize. Your student may or may not be busy packing, and you may be busy worrying about why they’re not packing yet. And through it all, your student is busy trying to say goodbye to friends, and you are trying to come to terms with the fact that they’ll be gone.

Amid all of the flurry of preparations for leaving, there are some important decisions that you and your college student should make to anticipate potential situations later on. If you spend some time this summer agreeing on these points, you won’t be taken by surprise when inevitable issues arise later. You’ll know that you and your student are ”on the same page”, and you may prevent difficulties later. Here are eight things to discuss with your student before they leave.

Good Communication Can Be an Important Key to Your College Student’s Success

June 23, 2012June 24, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

If you have read several of our posts here at College Parent Central, you’ve certainly seen by now that we feel that good communication is one of the important keys to many college students’ success. That good communication must take place between the student and the college, between the parents and the college, but most importantly between the parents and the student. Good communication is transactional and involves both talking and listening.

Because we feel that good communication is so important, we have several posts about improving or maximizing communication. There are some ways in which we can all improve our skills. We recommend that you take some time to read some of the following posts and think about both your own communication skills and those of your college student. Is there room for improvement?

When the College Experience Hits a Roadblock: Helping Your College Student Deal with Dissatisfaction

January 10, 2024May 27, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

College parenting begins, for many parents, during the application and admission process. We help keep track of deadlines, we arrange college visits, we support through the SAT exams, we read admissions essays, and we support our students through the acceptance wait and the final decision. Then we enter the next phase of helping our student get ready to head to college and make the transition. We know our role changes during the many phases of the college years, but we assume that we’ll settle in and enjoy the ride — even if there are a few bumps along the way.

However, for an increasing number of students, the college experience may come with a certain amount of disappointment, disillusionment and dissatisfaction. Things simply may not be working. Students may turn to parents once again to help decide what to do next. For some students, the problem may be in making the adjustment to college life or in being unprepared for the experience. For others, academics are overwhelming and help is needed. Still other students may question whether they made the ”right” choice of college or major. They may feel that a change will help.

Parents Can Help High School — and College — Students Deal with Disappointment

December 27, 2022February 23, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

Events like the Olympic Games are a marvel. Once every few years we are able to watch the best in the world doing what they do. They put everything on the line, give everything that they have — and they do it publicly. When they succeed, there is nothing like the thrill of that moment. When they do not, to say that they are disappointed is completely inadequate.

As parents, most of us love nothing better than to see our children succeed at whatever they attempt. Sometimes, however, they will not. It is easy to celebrate with your child when they are successful. It is heart wrenching to support your child through disappointment. As parents, we can make the difference in how our students face and deal with their disappointment. Our children have dealt with disappointments all of their lives, but as they face college acceptances or rejections, or perhaps their first semester college grades, the stakes seem somehow higher. They will get in to their choice of college — or not. They may receive adequate financial aid (perhaps merit aid) — or not. They may get into the classes they want, or the major they want — or not. They may make the team, or the play, or the assistantship — or not.

College Spring Break: Another “Letting Go” Experience for Parents

January 5, 2018January 17, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

If it is spring semester, spring break is on the minds of most students — and many of their parents. Students have been hard at work since the fall, many have had a winter break at home with their families, and many students look forward to that mid-point of spring semester when they can let off steam. Sending your student off to college as a first-year student was a sometimes frightening ”letting go” experience for many parents. One of the next major steps of independence for many students may be heading off on a trip for spring break.

Not all students travel for spring break. The reality is that many of those students who do head for the typical spring break destinations receive a lot of publicity, but these students represent only a portion of the number of college students in the country. Many students cannot afford expensive spring break trips. Many students head home for some quality down time with family, or extra study time. Some students spend break working to increase income. Increasingly, many students opt to spend an alternative spring break traveling and doing community service work. More and more colleges are offering organized alternatives to their students. College athletes may travel with a team. Some students spend the break doing internships. And some students choose to travel — but not to prime student destinations.

If your student is coming home for break, remember that, just like winter break, your student probably needs some down time. That may mean that she may spend much of the week sleeping, doing laundry, eating, catching up on TV, and possibly sleeping some more. This is a vacation for your student. She has likely just finished midterm exams, and she knows that she has a lot of work ahead of her when she returns to school. Be patient with her student hours, her apparent lack of motivation, and her need for sleep.

How — and Why — to Help Your College Student Create a Budget

December 27, 2019January 15, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

College is expensive. Both parents and students know that they are investing a lot of money in a college education. Some families have pieced together significant scholarships, grants and loans in order to pay for a college education. This article is not about those bigger financial issues that make a college education possible. It is about helping your student create and live by a daily budget for their living expenses. Whether your student must pay for their own expenses, or whether you partially or fully fund those expenses, college is the ideal time for your student to learn to manage money carefully.

Working together with your student to help establish a budget may provide an opportunity for you to talk with them about priorities, needs and wants, interests, and goals. You will get to know your student even better. You will be helping them to establish an important skill for after graduation, as well as helping your student understand where their money goes now. Your student may already understand, or may be surprised to discover, how quickly little expenses add up. Your student’s budget will be more and more realistic each semester that they spend at college as they learn what true costs are and what opportunities they may have to save. If your student is just starting college, their budget may be only an estimate and they will need to be flexible as they fine tune.

Thinking About Budgeting

Hopefully, your college student will be interested and willing to work at setting up a budget. If they resist, try to gently insist. Help your student understand the importance of knowing where their money goes. Convince them that if they want or need more money, or more independence, later, then they will have a more solid argument if they can demonstrate that they are spending responsibly. Creating a daily budget is another step toward the responsible independence that both you and your student seek.

Communicating With Your College Student: Is the Climate Right?

June 23, 2012January 12, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

When your child leaves home for college, you worry about losing contact. She will be living at college, and perhaps not returning home for several weeks or months, so you worry. However, with some effort on your part, your communication with your student may become even more meaningful than when she was home.

This is the fifth and final post in a series that may give you food for thought about how you communicate with your college student. Some of our suggestions may be common sense reminders, and some may be new ideas for you. Obviously, communication skills are interrelated, so please consider all of these suggestions together. Our first post concerned how you listen to your student, our second looked at nonverbal communication, our third discussed perception checking, and our fourth applied some interviewing principles. In this post we consider how to frame some of your messages so your student may be willing to listen. We hope that thinking about how you listen and talk to your student may help you to keep all of your communication doors wide open.

Communication with your college student is important. You work hard at it. You provide opportunities, listen to your student, try to be aware of what is being said between the lines, you ask the right questions, and yet you sometimes may feel as though your student becomes defensive or reluctant to tell you about his thoughts and feelings. Yes, it is possible that your student just may not want, or be able, to talk to you right now. But it is also possible that you might be able to do more to create a supportive and open climate that will encourage your student to share her feelings. Communication researcher Jack Gibb has suggested six areas in which we sometimes create a defensive communication climate rather than the supportive one that we desire. We’d like to share some of these potential pitfalls and offer some suggestions for you to increase your positive communication.

Communicating With Your College Student: Six Principles to Help You Make the Most of Opportunities

November 27, 2020January 6, 2010 by Vicki Nelson

When your child leaves home for college, you may worry about losing contact. They will be living at college, and perhaps not returning home for several weeks or months, so you worry. However, with some effort on your part, your communication with your student may become even more meaningful than when they were home.

This post is the fourth in a series of five posts that may give you food for thought about how you communicate with your college student. Some of our suggestions are common sense reminders, and some may be new ideas for you. Obviously, communication skills are interrelated, so please consider all of these suggestions together. Our first post concerned how you listen to your student, our second looked at nonverbal communication, and our third discussed perception checking. In this post we consider how to ask the most helpful questions and how to apply some interviewing principles (yes, interviewing). In our final post we’ll look at how to frame some of your messages so your student may be more willing to listen. We hope that thinking about how you listen and talk to your student may help you to keep all of your communication doors wide open.

A conversation is not an interview, and we don’t like conversations that begin to feel like interviews — or worse, interrogations. However, those of us who have experienced well conducted interviews know that a good interview can feel like friendly conversation — and can elicit extremely helpful information. Thinking about, and applying, a few basic principles of good interviewing may help you make your conversations with your student more productive.

We don’t want to suggest that you should strategize every exchange with your student — that’s obviously not the kind of communication that you want. However, these principles may be most helpful when you need to have a serious or directed conversation with your student.

Communicating With Your College Student: Are You Sure You Understand?

December 22, 2021December 29, 2009 by Vicki Nelson

When your child leaves home for college, you worry about losing contact. They will be living at college, and perhaps not returning home for several weeks or months, so you worry. However, with some effort on your part, your communication with your student may become even more meaningful than when they were home.

This article is the third in a series of five that may give you food for thought about how you communicate with your college student. Some of our suggestions may be common sense reminders, and some may be new ideas for you. Obviously, communication skills are interrelated, so please consider all of these suggestions together. Our first article concerned how you listen to your student, our second looked at nonverbal communication. In this article we discuss how to check perceptions to make sure you understand what your student is really saying. In our final two articles we’ll look at how to ask helpful questions, and how to frame some of your messages so your student may be willing to listen. We hope that thinking about how you listen and talk to your student may help you to keep all of your communication doors wide open.

You listen carefully to your student and you consider the nonverbal signals so that you can read between the lines. You know you’re getting the message. Maybe. No matter how much care you take to try to get the message correctly, you may be wrong. One technique that can help to improve your communication with your college student is called perception checking. It is simply making sure that what you think you heard is accurate. Don’t assume that your understanding is correct.

The goal of perception checking is that both you and your student have a shared understanding, that both you and your student know that you are working together to understand each other. This cooperative approach helps you to clarify what you’ve heard, but not put your student on the spot. It shows your respect for your student because you don’t assume that you can read their mind, and it shows that you recognize that your perspective may be different from your student’s.

Communicating With Your College Student: Are You Reading Between the Lines?

December 31, 2017December 22, 2009 by Vicki Nelson

This post is the second in a series of five posts that may give you food for thought about how you communicate with your college student. We’re posting one of these articles each week for five weeks. Some of our suggestions may be common sense reminders, and some may be new ideas for you. Obviously, communication skills are interrelated, so please consider all of these suggestions together. Our first post concerned how you listen to your student. In this post we’ll consider nonverbal communication and the signals that you send and interpret. In future posts we discuss how to check perceptions to make sure you understand what your student is really saying, how to ask helpful questions, and how to frame some of your messages so your student may be willing to listen. We hope that thinking about how you listen and talk to your student may help you to keep all of your communication doors wide open.

Most of us think of nonverbal communication as body language, and it is. However, there are more facets to nonverbal communication than many of us might imagine, even though we use these aspects of communication daily to help us understand people. So, as we discuss nonverbal communication, let’s begin by broadening our definition. Nonverbal communication is anything that helps to get a message from one person to another without using the meaning of the words. With this definition, nonverbal communication includes not only body language, but also tone of voice, appearance, timing, facial expressions, and even the atmosphere in which we choose to have a conversation.