Summer 2009

St. Norbert Secrets: Parenting a St. Norbert Student
Corday Goddard, Assistant Dean for Student Development

By now, many of you have been to our summer orientation program, where you heard us talk about the ways your role as parents might change over the next few months. Even if you have not yet attended orientation, you probably have gotten all kinds of advice from friends and colleagues about how to parent your college student.

Here’s the secret to being a successful parent to any college student: There is no secret! In fact, among all the advice you may have gotten from us or from others, I’ll bet that you were given some good suggestions, some suggestions that contradicted one another … and some that may have seemed to contradict common sense.

A couple of words of advice that St. Norbert parents have shared with us:

Talk about tomorrow, today. There are a number of things you and your student can discuss now about how life is going to be when they arrive on campus in the fall: How often will you contact them? How often will they contact you? What are your expectations if they travel? Can they wait at least six weeks to travel home? Can you wait until Family Weekend to return to campus to visit them? The decisions you make this summer may change as you both grow into your roles, but that’s okay. The important thing is to have at least some of these discussions before move-in day!

See yourself as a coach. Even if you have regularly intervened on your son’s or daughter’s behalf throughout their high school career, you now have an opportunity to teach them how they can best get their issues resolved and questions answered. Before picking up the phone to work directly with an administrator, coach or faculty member, explore with your son or daughter how they might approach the right person in the right way. Problem-solve with them, explore what resources exist that can help them, even have them practice using assertive communication with you. Then let them attempt to address their concerns on their own.

Change is good. Understand that your relationship with your student is going to evolve, and that you can either embrace the evolution or be afraid of it. It would be a waste of your money and your student’s time if he/she spent four years at St. Norbert and graduated unchanged, right? Celebrate that your sons and daughters are becoming adults, and that you now get to develop an adult relationship with them. Parents have described this as an amazing, wonderful, rewarding transformation.

Use us. The multiple offers of assistance you may have heard from the admission office for the last several months or from numerous members of the St. Norbert faculty and staff throughout summer orientation are all genuine. We are as interested in your student’s success at St. Norbert as you are, and we want to help. Again, the best approach is for the student to work to address concerns he/she has, but we can help you identify resources or direct your student to the appropriate person on campus to help them. We are willing to meet with your student either to problem-solve with them or to help resolve the issue. It is not unusual for a member of the St. Norbert faculty or staff to accompany a student to another office to help them meet with others on campus. That is part of what it means to be a member of the St. Norbert community.

Be patient. It has become fairly common for parents to share with us that they have endured late-night, tear-soaked telephone calls, their son or daughter begging to come home, followed by the rest of the night spent wondering whether or not to just get in the car and race to De Pere … only to hear the very next day that everything is back to normal, life is good (or at least okay) and that there is no need to be concerned. Homesickness is normal, as is a period of adjustment to having a roommate. There will be bumps in the road, especially during fall semester. Be patient, and give your student an opportunity to grow from their experiences … even the difficult ones.

If you have questions about anything shared in this article, or have ideas for our next "Parent Trap" session, please contact Corday Goddard, assistant dean for student development, at 920-403-1351, or at corday.goddard@snc.edu