Wildcat Parents recently reached out to President James “Jim” Dean Jr. and asked him to share a few bits of advice from both his experiences as a parent and his years as an educator and university administrator. President Dean agreed. Here are his thoughts for parents of college students, in his own words.
Colleges are wonderlands of opportunity for students to learn both inside and outside the classroom. They will literally never have this kind of opportunity again. Encourage your student to take full advantage of what the university has to offer.
"Express confidence to your student that they will be successful, but encourage them to ask for help when they need it."
In “Hamlet,” when Laertes was going back to school in France, his father Polonius famously told him, “This above all: To thine ownself be true.” I can’t improve on that advice. Encourage your student to remember the values they have learned in your family and not to abandon them easily because other people have other values.
Express confidence to your student that they will be successful, but encourage them to ask for help when they need it. Virtually no one gets through college without some struggle, and it is one important place when you learn to work through challenges. Let your student make the inquiries and investigate options rather than do it for them.
