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[quote=Anonymous]I don't think it's "helicoptering" to tell your kid (once, but firmly) that he's not at college to sleep in. That he needs to go to class unless he has something truly important to do (like work a job he needs to pay the rent). Whether or not you have this life experience, as the PP said, it's part of parenting to inform your kid of the potential negative consequences -- like, say, if he doesn't get this material down, he may do poorly in the next level class, or not have the cushion of good grades now in the easy classes to allow for a little slippage later on when the going really gets tough.

Back in the dark ages when I started at my Ivy undergrad as a biology major, I had no one to tell me I was being stupid for doing stupid things like taking five classes first semester, scheduling calculus at 8 am, and skipping class because no one cared. It was a very hard lesson to learn when I tanked chem, didn't do well in calc, did less well than I could have in bio, and ended with a 2.5 GPA that first semester. I fled bio for political science and ended up doing very well, doing interesting things, getting a great graduation education and I'm happy in my career.

But I still wish I'd had *someone* -- a parent (mine were overseas, and there was no such thing as email), an advisor who cared, hell, an upperclassman who'd gone through it -- to tell me I was being an idiot. A nudge in the right direction, whether it comes from a parent or another person, can make a huge difference for a kid who has never been away from home and never done this college thing before. Parenting doesn't stop when they go away to college. [/quote]

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