Parent to parent: Lines of communication

It’s Thursday night, and I’m wondering what my son, Kevin, is doing. If I looked at his Facebook page, I might find that he’s studying at the library, working at the campus radio station or playing a game of “Clue” with friends.

That is, if I could check his Facebook page. We’re family, but we’re not friends — at least when it comes to social networking sites on the Internet.

Not “friends” with your collegian either? Not a problem — it just means that staying in touch may take a little more effort.

What’s a parent to know

Some parents — Kevin’s mother among them — are mildly annoyed that their sons and daughters exclude them from their circle of friends who can view their Facebook information. They wonder how their kids can be willing to share every random thought, every misadventure and every unflattering photo with people they barely know, but not with their own parents.

Me? As always, I take the longer view. In the scheme of things, do we really need to know whether our kids are playing beer pong at 2 a.m.? OK, that is good to know. But the point is, there are parts of their lives they justifiably want to keep private. We wouldn’t expect to tag along with them to a party, so we shouldn’t expect to read the liner notes from their social escapades.

How’s a parent to know

And the fact is, we have more than enough tools to stay in touch as it is. Looking back on my years in college, I realize I had almost no regular communication with home. We didn’t have a phone in our dorm room, let alone e-mail or cell phones. A call home meant using a payphone; if I ever did that, I can’t quite remember it.

So parents shouldn’t fret if they are blocked from their students’ Facebook page, or not invited to follow their every move on Twitter. Between phones, e-mails, texting and actual visits, we have plenty of ways to stay in touch.

And as you probably know, any stealthy attempts to keep track of their activities — say, by “friending” a friend of theirs — is considered stalking. I’ll have to plead guilty to one version of that: Since our checking accounts are all linked online, I can follow my kids’ movements as they use their debit cards around town — or out of town. I’m no detective, but I’m always keeping an eye out for purchases in places like Reno and Tijuana.

Direct connection

Such indulgences aside, there’s nothing like direct communication. For parents of freshmen especially, it’s important to make regular calls to see how they are juggling all the new things in their lives — a demanding academic schedule, new people and living quarters that might not afford them the privacy they had back home.

The heightened risk of swine flu is another reminder why it’s good to stay in touch with actual conversation; you can’t count on roommates and classmates to be as tuned in as you are to your student’s health. When others might not, you’ll hear the tiredness and strain in their voices.

Health is also one of those areas that separate friends who come and go from parents who are in for the long haul. They may not want to tell us about the party they went to last Friday, but usually they will share with us the details of ailments they wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else.

It may not be as much fun to talk about, but when it comes to open communication, you take what you can get.