Reply to Do you let you 17- or 18-year-old high school senior visit friends at college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No.  I used to visit my college friends when I was in high school and every event involved drinking and unacceptable behavior.  I'm surprised I survived![/quote]

Too many parents on this board want to coddle little billy/mary right up to the point that they leave the house.  Then they are shocked when the sheltered child goes wild during first weeks of college.

I let my older during senior year visit friends at a couple of Universities in the fall. I suspect that there was drinking going on but [b]I have always operated on a "don't ask / don't tell" when it comes to teen drinking[/b].  I drank a couple times a month in high school and I survived as did my friends.

These comments are not directed to the nervous nellies who always pat themselves on the back and are in an apparent arms race to show how protective they can be of their children. They believe that they love their too much to accept any risk and will go to herculean efforts to show how great of parents that they are. Unfortunately, these are lost causes and nothing that I or anyone could write will ever convince them that there are other reasonable alternatives.

Instead, this is for those parents who are willing to weigh the risk/rewards and are able to look beyond the following week. Such long thinkers are becoming increasingly rare in today's world!
[/quote]

And this is exactly what experts advise NOT doing.

Here's what my DS1 did not do any time in high school:

Stay alone in a house overnight without an adult
Go to visit any friends in college
Go to beach week
Do any drinking (or drug use) that I knew about (or even suspected. I actually don't think my DS1 did any drinking at all in high school. Which doesn't strike me as odd or unusual, because I didn't either.)

Here are some of the things my DS1 did his senior year:

Took public transit wherever he wanted, in groups and alone
Traveled via bus to and from his volunteer gig 2 days/week
Rode his bike to and from his part-time job
Did the family grocery shopping several times/month
Got to and from regular doctor appointment on his own (management of chronic condition)
Flew without adult supervision to and from grandparents' home
Took metro alone to Union Station and boarded Amtrak train for solo trip to Philly, where he met family friends for a weekend stay

IOW, he was given a great deal of freedom. Just not the freedom to get wasted while I looked the other way.

He's a sophomore in college now and doing very well, no indication of "going wild."[/quote]

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