Hickey: Expect drastic change in relationship with parents during first year

Let’s be real: Although a lot of kids really miss their parents when they go away to college,… Let’s be real: Although a lot of kids really miss their parents when they go away to college, a lot of kids really, really don’t. That many students actually consider “getting away from my family” a primary draw of college life is perhaps the worst-kept secret of freshman year.

That said, moving across the state, or however far you moved when you came to Pitt — maybe not that far at all — is not a miracle cure for parental drama. In fact, probably the most useful thing I can do is remind you that after you leave the house, you still have parents. They’re still there. They’re still your parents. And I’m here to tell you that keeping this in mind is a worthwhile part of setting out on your own.

Take me, for example. Blogger Holly Pervocracy once said that 98 percent of her relationship with her mother “was good and loving and selfless and, if anything, too generous. The other 2 percent was pretty ugly.” Although Holly’s’s relationship with her mother was much more tumultuous than my relationship with my parents ever was, that sentiment spoke to me. It’s not that I don’t love my parents to pieces — I do, and they love me back. But while love is more than enough to prevent you from physically killing your family, it is, in my experience, not enough to make a household peaceful. For my father and I — both intensely opinionated, occasionally short-fused people who are so far across the political spectrum from one another that we have to pay long-distance fees to talk about the election — all the love in the world isn’t always enough to stop us from getting into shouting matches when the news is on.

Whatever your situation, you’re not the only one. Some new students are coming from truly deplorable family situations, rife with abuse, substance addiction, constant fighting or a number of other factors that can create a really unhealthy scene. Sometimes, the student and parents in question have simply exhausted the number of years they can live continuously under one roof together without going bonkers. Needless to say, after a few solid years of the opinion-fueled tension in my house, fleeing to Pittsburgh and not spending any significant amount of time in Dad’s car when Rush Limbaugh was on was a huge relief. The truth is that a lot of students, whether the source of their parental conflicts comes from politics or other personal disagreements, experience relief when they get to college. But it’s worthwhile to remember that in most cases, your family loves you and misses you and wants to know how you’re doing.

So for the love of God, answer your parents’ phone calls. I’m not just saying this for their sakes; I’m saying it for yours. My freshman year, I put off returning my parents’ calls for a variety of reasons: I was busy; I was hiding bad news about my grades; my father had learned over Easter break that I was pro-choice and was vocally concerned about my chances of salvation.

Whatever the reason, putting off answering and returning calls from home, like putting off just about anything, was akin to shooting myself in the foot. After 10 days, my mother thought I was dead and started repeatedly calling my roommate. By the time I did get back to them, they were livid — and they had every right to be, as I was being rude and inconsiderate.

Nowadays, it’s much easier to remember to call my parents back because — not having a meal plan or decent paid employment — if I dodge all of my parents’ phone calls, I’ll starve. Which brings me to my next point: money. Some students are self-sufficient, but most receive at least some help from their parents in getting through school, whether the help comes in the form of tuition contributions, room and board, assistance with rent or spending money.

Helping you out with school or rent doesn’t entitle your parents to treat you like crap; if you’re in an honest-to-God abusive situation, it’s likely your parents point out the incredible sacrifices they’re making for you an awful lot, and hold them over your head inappropriately. That isn’t cool under any circumstances. But if your situation is more benign than that, little displays of gratitude – remembering to say “thank you” whenever they deposit a check in your account and generally demonstrating that you understand that your parents are working hard to send you to school – can go a long way toward showing your parents that you don’t take their sacrifices for granted or see them as a paycheck.

Finally, while you don’t have to come home every weekend that your mother asks you to, please remember to be considerate when you do come home. It might be weird to have your parents ask when you’ll be home when you go out with your high school friends during Thanksgiving break when you’ve been pulling regular all-nighters in Pittsburgh for nearly three months. But this is one battle that just doesn’t make sense to choose to fight. As my boyfriend’s mother said in the instructional guide she made for her sons — and later her students in school — as they all went off to college: “Your parents already suspect you are out all night doing bad things. Don’t confirm their suspicions.”