Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103664 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-17
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.com
Parenting a college-bound student is a tricky business--combining your emotional and financial support with your child's newfound independence can seem nearly impossible. The authors of Don't Tell Me What to Do, Just Send Money are all too familiar with these difficulties and have created a practical guide that addresses specific situations and provides effective guidelines for changing the parent-child relationship. Topics are addressed frankly, and many parents may have trouble reading the sections concerning controversial subjects such as drug and alcohol use, birth control, homosexuality, and changes in religious and political beliefs. The emphasis here is not on changing your kid's mind about any of these things, but rather how parents can approach these sensitive topics while maintaining a positive and honest relationship. Most pages contain small text boxes highlighting what's on your mind and what's on your child's mind, as well as practical lists suggesting what to do and what to avoid, and these can be extremely helpful as a quick reference when faced with a sudden announcement from your student who's decided to change majors, stop living in the dorm, or study abroad.

With a down-to-earth tone and clear insight into the minds of both parents and college students, this is an easy-to-read book that manages to handle difficult topics without preaching or downplaying important events. Ultimately, this book aims to help parents and their nearly adult children make the transition to a new kind of relationship, ideally one that is open and mutually respectful. With careful reading and consideration, the suggestions presented will help create a handy road map to lead you through the twists and turns of parenting your college student. --Jill Lightner

From Kirkus Reviews
This concrete, easy-to-use guide is designed to help anxious parents support and understand their newly fledged children as they weather the slings and arrows of the first year of college. Johnson (Assistant Dean of Students/Cornell) and Schelhas-Miller (Adolescent Development/Cornell) possess decades of professional experience as college counselors, and their easy expertise is obvious. Despite glib overtones--the work at times reads like a transcript from a Power Point talk given at a generic freshman orientation--the authors address difficult issues with varying degrees of success. Certain basic assumptions--parental acceptance of teen sex (even to the point of providing off-to-college birth control pills) and the equally underplayed acceptance of underage drinking and drugging--might be obstacles for some readers, as might gender- and class-based generalizations, such as those addressed to young women on campus and individuals who are the first in their (immigrant) family to attend college. Despite these caveats, however, most potential first-year situations--from academic probation and credit-card sprees to date rape and eating disorders--are discussed in level, clear language designed to help parents allow their children to cope. The authors' main message (that parenting style should evolve from daily caregiving to more of a mentoring relationship) is clear and consistent, and seems sane and grounded guidance.Both a useful guide and a literary security blanket, offering familiar comforts and good, solid advice in a text-dense sea of boxes, lists, and resources for further reading. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Helen Johnson founded and directed Cornell University's first Parents' Program. She has worked for more than twenty-five years in higher education as a writer, career center director, assistant dean of students, and program manager. She is the parent of two recent college graduates and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.Christine Schelhas-Miller teaches adolescent development in the department of human development at Cornell University and is a consultant to independent, secondary schools on issues related to adolescent development. For over twenty years she has worked in higher education, providing academic, personal, and career counseling to students. She is the parent of two children and lives in Ithaca, New York.

Customer Reviews

Comforting to parents
The authors do a thorough job of presenting just about any scenario that could possibly take place in college, good or bad. They go into great detail about what parents and students might be thinking in any given situation. I especially liked the "What to do" and "What to avoid" lists for parents. They might help stem some parental overreaction and allow cooler heads to prevail. Obviously, as evidenced by the sheer number of topics discussed, from educational to social choices, there is a lot to think - and worry - about once you've let go of your child and allowed them to start making many of their own decisions.

Drawn-out, fictional dialogue used to portray possible situations while it might help some parents to visualize events, some of us would prefer a descriptive paragraph or two instead. And, while the book is directed at kids entering college, much of the advice applies to grown kids who leave home without college as their goal.

This book offers comfort to parents, especially those whose first child is going off to college and they are having trouble letting go. In any case, it is best to be prepared for both the routine and sometimes unexpected situations as they occur, and this book does a good job of educating parents from the beginning to end. 50 Ways to Leave Your Mother

great info
At first glance of the title page, this book looks corny. However, inside it is filled with a lot of very useful and practical advice.

An okay book . . .
if you really need it. Personally, I thought some of the scenarios were more likely to have occured during the high school years than during college. For instance, the one in which the girl in college becomes jealous of her single mother's time and attention when the mother starts dating. I would expect someone who is considered mature enough to go off to college to be mature enough to handle the fact that mom has a love life. As for the sections devoted to parents who harrass the university faculty/staff on behalf of their kids - surely these folks are aberrations? When she was in HS, I sometimes intervened in situations but over the last three years, my daughter has grown into a mature, poised and intelligent young woman and as such I expect her to handle these things on her own. I would never dream of intervening in an academic situation on her behalf now. It's frankly none of my business.