Ask Deanie

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SMU Parent Liaison Deanie Kepler offers advice on helping your student.

What Do I Do? My Student Keeps Calling!

For many parents of first-year college students, phone calls from an upset son or daughter can be tremendously unsettling. In most cases, once your student has “dumped” their complaints and concerns on you, they go away feeling much better – undoubtedly leaving a caring, loving parent with an anxious two or three days. This is normal, and to be expected.

Don’t Be a Hero

Try to avoid the tendency to throw on a cape and assume “superhuman” powers to fix whatever the issues are. Give your student some time. Remind them of the resources available from SMU, such as the Counseling and Testing Center, the Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center, and the Roommate Resource at Reslife.Net. Encourage them to seek out their own solutions. In most instances, they will already have moved on to something else by the next time you talk with them.

If problems persist, explore with your student what he or she has done to work them out and what resources to use. Encourage, encourage, encourage and commend students on their efforts to handle issues themselves – for many, this will be their first time in an uncomfortable or difficult situation.

Know When to Share

Sometimes parental concerns must and should be shared with university staff and administrators. Your student’s health and well-being are always our primary concern, and our partnership with parents is an important one as your student grows and develops into mature adulthood.

Take the Long View

All that said, the first months of college can be stressful and challenging for students and for their families. In a ragged file folder on my desk, I keep a yellowed clipping from a chemistry professor, Dr. Robert Kerber, at Stony Brook University. He writes:

“The fact that your son or daughter has earned admission to a first-rate university and accepted the challenge of becoming a student here is a strong indication of your success in raising him or her so far. Now comes the hard part – standing back and letting him or her continue to grow into adulthood by exercising a good deal of independence. Character is built be surmounting obstacles, not by having them removed from your path.

You college student may make some bad decisions. In that case, you should supply emotional support, but you should not intervene to try to protect your young adult from the consequences of those decisions. He or she will learn more by accepting those consequences and moving on to make better decisions than by your efforts to shield him or her.

Do not believe everything you hear: college students everywhere complain about food, but nevertheless most freshmen add 10-15 pounds during their first year – how bad can it be? This is both a literal fact and a metaphor for their academic lives. They may complain about the work, about the unreasonable faculty, about someone’s accent; but, if they rise to the challenges, they will learn as much in their first year at the University as in any two previous years. Then they’ll really get going; into research or creative activities of their own. It happens here! Give it a chance!”

Question for Deanie? Ask Deanie at gkepler@smu.edu or 214-768-4797.

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