I think you and your wife have a great take on parenting, Dinsdale, which is at odds with what we commonly see of modern parenting, where the child’s feelings and self-esteem are more important than raising a useful human being. My only concern was that your daughter was reluctant to come to you when she didn’t do as well as she had been, and you and others have addressed that.
My other comment would be that you and your wife will indeed be finding new ways to interact with your daughter in the next couple of years, as she does take on full adult responsibilities. My best wishes for a smooth transition.
You are the one who took “expect” and turned it into “demanding” and then characterized that as infantile.
But yes, if my wife “demanded” her privacy with respect to grades, I’d “demand” she pay for it herself. It goes both ways.
And going back to the OP, there is a difference in recognizing that a grade is not someone’s best effort and over-reacting. It can make a difference in the hiring. If two otherwise equally qualified candidates have applied, the hiring manager needs to use something to discriminate and GPA for someone just out of college could be that factor.
No one has said you don’t have a right to expect those things.
My point is not that it’s wrong to expect good grades. What is of concern (to me) is the tactic you used to get information out of your daughter that at the end of the day really has nothing to do with you. You’re appealing to contractual agreements (“I give you money, therefore you owe me certain things!”) rather than parental concern (“Hey, if you’re having problems with your classes, I want to know. Are you stressed out this semester?”). Perhaps if you took the latter approach, she would have been honest with you from the start.
And about consequences. Parents must give their children consequences to teach them lessons in life and prevent them from going down the wrong path. You’re still in the mentality that it’s your job to do this. It’s not. She’s an adult. If less than perfect grades are a bad consequence upon themselves, let her figure that out herself. Clubbing her over the head about the fact you pay her tuition isn’t going to teach her anything worthwhile; it’s only going to make her resent you. her.
But hey, maybe I’m completely wrong. You know her better than anyone else here. Which doesn’t explain why you’d post this in IMHO, but whatevers.
Do you disagree that the OP demanded to see her grades? Because he did. This is what he wrote:
So essentially he made an ultimatum: cough up the printout or else.
I would not expect an SO to make such a request of me, even if he was paying my tuition. I would might expect him to ask “hey, how did you do last semester?” and if I said “fine overall, although I didn’t do as well as I should have in math”, I’d expect that to be enough. This is what I mean by keeping one’s spouse informed.
Even if he thought I was being a little evasive with my answer, I would not expect him to demand written documentation verifying that I wasn’t out partying all his money away. Especially if my record for the last 3 years was darn near perfect. Overlooking that in favor of honoring contractural agreements is what I mean by an unwillingness to fork over trust.
Your daughter is an adult and I presume your ultimate hope is that she will act like one, right? She may not be independent right now because you’re paying her tuition, but I assume you’re contributing these funds not so that she can stay a child under your thumb, but so that she can gain the necessary skills and credentials to support herself in the future.
When it comes to money, power, and autonomy, there is a difference between how you treat a spouse and a child. But your daughter is not a child, she’s an adult.
Must be nice to always be so confident in your parenting/relationship choices that you never feel any desire for some other opinions.
You really have no qualms about rephrasing things in any way that suits your purposes, do you? From my OP:
So I told her I understood that she was becoming more independent, but that we required to see a printout of our kids’ grades, and if she didn’t feel that was appropriate, perhaps we needed to discuss arrangements for tuition while she student taught this fall. She responded that she guessed we would have to discuss that. I told her that was certainly her choice. I thought it not the wisest choice, but it was hers to make.
Feel free to consider that an ultimatum. I don’t.
And how about the messy area in between the extremes of adult and child? Although my offspring will always be my “kids”, as you quoted, I referred to her (accurately, I think) as a young adult[] under age 25 who ha[s] never been fully independent.
Are you aware that you are consistently misconstruing things? Is it intentional? Seriously, I would think there was sufficient basis for discussion in what I (and others) have said, without the need for resorting to exaggerations.
[quote[You really have no qualms about rephrasing things in any way that suits your purposes, do you? [/quote]
You posted the exact same thing I posted, so why are you accusing me of rephrasing anything?
According to Wikipedia, an ultimatum is defined as “a demand whose fulfillment is requested in a specified period of time and which is backed up by a threat to be followed through in case of noncompliance”. Why do not think your request constitutes this? By my reading, it clearly does. You told her to do X (cough up the printout), or else Y (your tuition will be up for debate).
Their lack of independence would only be relevant if this was due to a failure on their part. Is it? Are your kids immature and unwilling to stand on their two feet, or are they relying on your money because you volunteered to pay their tuition and it was mutually decided that seeking income elsewhere would be impractical or imprudent? The answer to this question should make all difference in how you factor their lack of independence into the equation.
What do you think would happen if you didn’t see their grades? If they knew that they didn’t have to report back to you on their grades, do you think their GPAs would stay as they are? A person who thinks like a child will let their grades drop if they don’t have Mommy or Daddy checking over their shoulder. A person who thinks like an adult takes responsibility for their own grades, and will have the same GPA regardless. Which way does your daughter think, if you had to guess?
This is the kind of defensiveness that is bugging the crap out of me. How have I misconstrued anything you’ve said? If you can’t even bother to point out exactly where the distortion exists, then I’m forced to conclude you’re just reacting to phantom injustices here.
I’m late to the party, but I guess I’ll go ahead and let you in on my views as a college instructor.
I personally love FERPA. Most of the students I deal with are dual-credit, which means that they are earning their core college courses during their regular high school day. I’m employed by the college, and even though I go on-site to the high schools, my classes are exactly the same in every way as my standard college courses.
I am not allowed to discuss a student’s grade with anyone but the student, with the following two exceptions:
If the student gives express, written consent to discuss his grade with a third party;
If the parent fills out an appropriate “dependent student” form, proving that the student is dependent on the parent.
If the 2nd one is met, I can legally discuss the grade with the parents. But I don’t. As a matter of policy, the only way I will even involve the parent is if the student brings the parent to an in-office conference.
Here’s my perspective: it is not the parent that is in my class every day. It is not the parent who will be receiving the grade at the end of the semester. It is not the parent who does the homework (hopefully.) Therefore, a student’s progress (or lack thereof) is between the student and me.
The tuition receipt doesn’t have the parent’s name–it’s in the name of the student. Where the student gets the tuition money is not my concern.
It’s ultimately a parent/student decision; ie “if I am paying for your education, you will provide me with progress reports whenever I ask for them.”
I hate to suggest that Wikipedia might have incorrect information but the key part of “ultimatum” is that it is a final offer. That is where the “ultimate” part comes in. The OP clearly stated that discussion about payment of tuition would follow.
As for misconstruing things, there was some bouncing between the hypothetical spouse and the word “expect” and the situation with the daughter and the word “demand”. We only know a small slice of the family dynamic but yet this has been characterized as micromanaging and infantilizing. I can certainly see why the OP might think he was being misconstrued.
Perhaps I missed it but I never saw where the drop in grades was the issue with the OP. That was just a fact provided that possibly explains why she was hesitant to show the grades.
I’ve made decisions that I was sure that were correct but still felt bad about the impact they would have. I don’t see any issue with bouncing a question like this out to get other perspectives.
There seems to be a general call for treating the daughter like an adult but I see that as exactly what is happening. Children have things provided, adults make agreeements.
This really speaks to my post above. I’ve hired a fair number of people over the past few years in highly competitive positions in a Fortune 50 company in New York City.
There is no way I or anyone else I know have ever looked at GPA. You could write on your resume that your GPA was 50 for all the difference it made, because we did not pull transcripts on the hundreds of resumes we received for each position. It might make a small difference if you go through a college recruitment program, but if you go that route, it matters a whole lot more where you went than how well you did there.
I have no comment on Dinsdale’s parenting style because I haven’t yet walked in those shoes. I will soon. My comment is that I was set up with what sounds like similar expectations, that good grades when you are young will be recognized and rewarded later, especially when searching for a job. I have found that with rare exceptions in particular careers, this is simply not the case. Good grades may open some doors (and are not exactly unimportant in my career as an aspiring academic), but out there in the Real World, no one gives a fuck.
I don’t think I graduated feeling like I was magically entitled to a great job just because I distinguished myself in school. But my parents, who possess truly inspirational parenting skills, did convince me from a young age that my achievements would actually matter in the grander scheme of my life. For the most part, they don’t. This is not to say that such achievements don’t help you learn other life skills, because they most assuredly do. The ability to concentrate, to delay gratification, to organize one’s time efficiently, and to teach oneself are all wonderful things. Getting good grades is fine, too. Grades are great for assigning accountability and as measures of overall progress.
But I kind of wish I never believed that they counted for much.
I have children in college myself, and if one of them had less than great term I think the last thing they would need is a guilt trip about money.
It’s not like a bad grade is going to make me stop paying for their education. I’m not expecting to get some kind of tangible “return” on my investment, I’m doing my job as a parent to provide them with opportunity.
I don’t ask about grades specifically, but I do ask how they’re doing. This turned out to be a good policy when my son found out the hard way that a math major isn’t really what he should be doing. He’s having to backtrack now, and I think he’s glad that he could talk to me about it and ask for advice about how to turn things back around.
American Heritage says the same thing, so I don’t get your skepticism.
If the OP feels justified in confronting his daughter this way, it doesn’t matter that his request meets the definition of an ultimatum. Ultimatum aren’t inherently bad negotiation strategies. They generally aren’t considered the best way, though, and that’s all I’ve been trying to get across here. Often times when one resorts to an ultimatum when less drastic options exist, things like trust, openness, and respect get sacrificed. In authoritarian relationships, that’s not a concern. In other types, it is.
The book “Getting to Yes” has more to say on this subject than I possibly could.
Someone offering their opinions about how the OP has handled things and using certain words to describe his behavior, is not miscontruing events. It’s offering a critical point of view. If the OP is bothered by people sharing their perceptions, he really shouldn’t have asked for them.
You and your wife are hilariously similar to my parents, Dinsdale (I’m sure you’re thrilled to hear that). The difference is that my parents insisted on seeing my grades but didn’t comment or really yell at me for screwing up undergrad and I screwed it up so much better than your daughter did. They were, however, extremely pushy and manipulative in the same way about leveraging financial stuff to get me to do what they wanted in terms of a career after college-and the argument they gave me is exactly what you said in one post-that at 20-something I was still young, only semi-independent and they wanted to prevent me from making mistakes that would be really hard to rectify down the road.
There was one VERY tense year as we negotiated back and forth on my going to grad school (hint, I lost). I can tell my parents anything (especially major issues) and do have a great relationship with them now, but people respond differently to that type of rancour in a relationship. For us it ended up smoothening out over time, but maybe for other people it’s enough to break off a relationship. Sometimes my sister and I do employ a tactic of skirting issues or quasi-lying because even the smallest issue is such a hassle (example: I have not sworn in one of my bar licenses because I’m being lazy and my parents ask me about it every, single day…I mean, wtf, are they the lawyers?).
What I’m saying is that remember the time you got super het up about the quilt braids? Your kids will eventually start quasi-lying to avoid quibbling with you on small shit and then you’ll end up posting 17000 threads about why they’re lying to you on the small shit.
If you’re paying the tuition then you can make it contingent of any condition you like, but that’s a private matter and should not involve the university in any way. For what its worth I always tell me parents my very mediocre grades even though they don’t pay my tuition.
When my parents were paying, they got the grades.
When I paid, they didn’t, only generic comments.
BTW, Peruvian law forces parents to support their kids’ college/higher educaction (within reasonable financial lmits) so long as their grades are good. So, you gotta show the grades.
I disagree. Asking for opinions does not necessarily include those that impugn the character of the person to whom you are talking. The person asking the question merits the benefit of the doubt. If there is information that is lacking, one should either ask for that information, or follow the social convention of assuming the best possible intentions.
Doing otherwise comes across as rude. And boy do I know it.
Good god, that’s scary! The thought that my kids might end up like you, I mean!
Face - I think I have a pretty good handle on where you stand re: this situation, and am not terribly interested in further parsing whatever each of us said when. If you wish to consider that a concession or admission of error on my part, feel free.
