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Parenting 2.0


I belong to an online parents group for the college my daughter attends. It has been very helpful as we lived through the beginning of the year jitters. It’s been a godsend for sharing information and getting advice. And yet.

Yesterday a parent bemoaned: I don’t understand the grading system!

The school maintains a system whereby parents may have access to the students’
academic work if the student allows them to. I can’t even remember if we asked our daughter to do this, and we certainly haven’t felt the desire to follow along from home. We hope she does well, and sometimes I worry how she will handle academics along with all the other enormous changes in her life.

But check up on her work? No.

Isn’t this the part where they fly the nest? Isn’t this the time when we let them?

Parenting in 2019 is clearly different than back when I went to college. I don’t know whether to feel confident in our choice to allow our daughter to be independent or feel guilty that I’m an irresponsible slacker. It’s a challenge I was not expecting.

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