Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

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 I have always operated on a "don't ask / don't tell" when it comes to teen drinking. 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!

Do you think that 16 year old HS kids are too young to visit their college friends overnight? What about 15? How about 14, 13, 12? Would you let your 14 year old go to a fraternity party with college students?

To my way of thinking they are going to be kids for such a short time. HS is a milestone in their lives and they should be enjoying being in HS and having the extra supervision (and security) of mom and dad for a little while longer. They will be graduated from HS soon enough, those days will be over and they will never be able to go back to them ever again. Let them enjoy being teenagers in HS while they still can. College, dorms, roommates, and college social events can wait.

Anonymous wrote:I can go on my daughter's instagram right now and find at least a dozen junior/senior girls who were partying at colleges this past weekend.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

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 I have always operated on a "don't ask / don't tell" when it comes to teen drinking. 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!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

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 I have always operated on a "don't ask / don't tell" when it comes to teen drinking. 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!

Anonymous wrote: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!

Anonymous wrote:Juniors and seniors going to visit (and party with) college freshman friends is super common.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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!

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 I have always operated on a "don't ask / don't tell" when it comes to teen drinking. 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!

Anonymous wrote: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!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you let your kid sleepover at a trusted friend's house if no parents are home? Same thing. If I trust the friend and I'm OK either the proposed sleeping arrangement, I'd allow it. If you're so worried about your DD being irresponsible, then you probably shouldn't go cold turkey next year anyway...

No, I don't do this either. Nor do I leave my teens alone overnight. So trusted friend can come here to sleep.

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to go against the grain here. When I was a senior in college, I did three weekend visits on college campuses that were required as part of merit scholarship interviews. One, the school put us up in a hotel on campus. The other two, we crashed with kids who had the same scholarship. Sleeping bag on the dorm floor. I stayed on campus with a friend who was a year older at a 4th college I was considering.

Those visits made me realize that my "dream college" was actually not a great fit, and that the college I had applied to to just to make my parents happy was a wonderful choice for me.

I would not want my own kids to choose a college without spending the night, preferably in a dorm, eating in the dining hall, attending some classes and meeting some kids without a parent tagging along-- when they are second semester seniors, for places the have acceptances or are likely to be accepted, or when they are interviewing for scholarships.

I don't condone drinking in high school, or wild partying or anything of that sort. My kids don't get to do whatever they want. But, if I can't trust them for 24 hours on a college campus in early spring of their senior year, how am I supposed to trust them to live on that same campus for weeks or months on end less than 6 months later? If they really can't manage a late Senior year overnight at a college they might attend in a few months, then I haven't done my job in preparing them to leave the nest.