Cashmere, ugh! I can only imagine how stressful this must be.

Can you just unplug the phone? Run a longer cord and stick the phone in the hallway?

Alas, no. There's no hallway, for one thing. Just an outdoor walkway.

I totally got an allowance in college. I don't remember how much it was, but my parents were my main source of income. I did get work study jobs, but not I think until my sophomore year (and then worked up the coolness ladder, until the inevitable bookstore job).

I tell you, I think cell phones are fabulous and wondrous, but they've completely changed the assumptions people make about communication. For me, it's a wondrous new thing that means if necessary I could make contact at almost any time -- for my students, it's just a fact that they ARE in contact at all times. I actually haven't had any problems with my kids this year, but there's definitely this weird generational gap where to the teachers it's a phone and to the students it's more like... a mouth.

I'm stoked...the guys at High Hat *love* my Rescue Me/ World Trade Center article. They said there are only...four edits. Not bad for a pitched afterthought, huh? I've noticed that, sometimes, that it's often not the thing I slave over that is the most successful.

Good grief. But then, I also went to college some 1000 miles away from home. My mother met one or two of my professors because she attended a parents' weekend during my freshman year. (But she talked most about azaleas blooming in New Orleans in March.)

I can see a parent calling someone at the college with whom they have a personal relationship to stop by the dorm and make sure the kid's okay. If the kid goes to the school where Aunt Marge or Dad's college roommate works, the kid should expect at least the occasional, "You doing okay?"

But calling to complain about an exam? My parents would never have dreamed of such a thing. And I can't imagine that anybody in my social circles would have dreamed of asking their parents.

Huh, I've never got an allowance. I got a paper route at age 11 and I've been employed ever since.

aw! just had a vision of pre-teen!sparky on her bike, pedaling furiously two dollars!

I complained to my mother about things like that, but just to vent. My mom and I like to talk to each other. She would never have tried to be my fixer, as far as tests or anything. People really do that? Cause I sit here all gimped out and everything, crying out for rescue in the eyes of the world, and yet? Excessive much?

It's a trend known as "helicopter parents." I just read some article that was talking about how it was leeching into these kids in the workplace as well. t shudder

Not only did I get no allowance in college, including I paid for my own books, I had to contribute to my tuition annually (I think it was $1500 a year, in those halcyon days of $20K private college tuitions) and when I went home for vacations, I had to buy my own train ticket.

That is what my $700 was for (books, flights, etc.). It wasn't random spending money--that's what work study was for. And I took out the max amount in student loans, at the time $2500/year (which is nothing compared to the debt I have from my PhD). Of course, I'm still bitter that my parents "stupidly" saved enough to send us to college, when we would have qualified for pretty decent financial aid.

I just read some article that was talking about how it was leeching into these kids in the workplace as well.

yep. They never have to deal with problems because their parents always fix them, so when they get out into the world, they have no coping skills.

Okay, despite my "never had an allowance" statement, I have to come clean. While I never got any allowance, they did pay for my books and my tickets home. I was given a Visa card for this purpose and WOE if I ever dared to use it for anything else. Except... except... at some point, my father must have accepted that books also meant a trip to the regular bookstore every couple of weeks where I could pick up my pleasure reading. I have no memory of this actually ever being discussed.

When I was in library school (this is after law school) my father had a heart attack and subsequent quadruple bypass. My mother paid the bills while he was recovering and found the Visa statement with my trips to the U. bookstore and swears she never knew he was paying it all those years, and we all get a good laugh out of how my father and I assumed that a novel or two a month was a necessity of life.