Advice for New Parents & Families

WF Ironwork with Wait Chapel in the background

With you every step of the way.

Practical guidance to help you support your student with confidence and care.

Where to Get Started

Reynolda Hall and Wait Chapel on the Wake Forest campus.

Below you’ll find a roundup of some general advice and important information we’ve put together for parents and families of new students.

Conversations to Have with Your Student

Review the Stop, Drop, and Roll Framework

Navigating family and student roles

Move-in Guide (available in early August)

Conversations to Have with Your Student

It would be helpful this summer to have some family discussions about your student’s hopes and expectations for college. Those expectations may differ from your own.

It will also be important to discuss behavioral and other expectations to ensure everyone is on the same page before school begins; see suggested topics below. Only you and your student will know what feels right for your family.

The summer is a great time to get clarity on how you will interact with each other once your student is at school. If your student calls you and sounds upset, you may interpret that as “I need to get involved/offer my advice” etc. whereas your student may just need to feel heard. One of the greatest tips is for family members in these cases is to ask their student directly: “What is my role in this conversation? Am I just listening? Or am I helping to problem-solve” etc. And then do what your student needs.

Alcohol and drugs

Talk about your expectations for your student’s behavior, and consider coaching them on resources available if they see a friend in trouble.

Keep reading

Our Alcohol and Other Drugs office encourages families to discuss with your student your family heredity to substance abuse and disordered eating problems. Currently, 90% of tolerance is thought to be hereditary and family history increases your student’s risk of experiencing a substance use problem.

Birth control, sexual health, and consent

Talk about birth control and sexual activity. It’s also important to have a conversation about consent, especially in regard to alcohol use (how can you ensure your partner is actively consenting?)

Budgeting, spending money, gambling, etc.

How much spending money will your students have? Will you send a set amount each week/month/on request? Will you monitor expenses? Do they know how to budget?

Keep reading

What do you expect to pay for? What (if anything) do you expect your student to pay for from their own money?

What if your student wants to gamble (e.g., card games, online sites, sports betting, etc.) – what is acceptable to your family?

Communication (with and about your student)

In terms of communication with your student: How often you will communicate? Who initiates that contact?

Pro tip: you don’t have to answer every call or text from your student immediately. It can be more helpful not to answer that phone call from your student as soon as they leave class; if they don’t have you to talk to, it creates an opportunity for your Deacs to connect with their classmates instead.

Keep reading

In terms of communication about your student: some families find it helpful to connect with other Wake Forest families via Facebook groups that are not run by or monitored by the University, or group chats/texts, etc. Please talk to your student about their comfort level with you sharing details about them in online/text spaces – even if you think it is no big deal, it might feel like a violation of their privacy to them.

Sometimes families want to ask [loving and well-intended] questions in an online/public forum (even if it is a closed group) about what may feel like sensitive topics to a student (e.g., “does the Student Health Service fill prescriptions for acne medication/ antidepressants/ ADHD/birth control?” “Can anyone recommend a counselor at the counseling center?” “Anyone else have a super-shy student?” “I’m worried because it seems like everyone has found a friend group except my son”). Talk about this now, before school starts, so you know your student’s wishes.

Ask before you disclose your student’s building or room number when housing assignments come out. You may be tempted to post “My student is in [building name, room number]. Who else will be on this hall?” or share your student’s new address. There may be reasons your student DOESN’T want the world to know which hall/room they are in. So ask first. (Tables turned, we as family members might not like having our kids share our home address online with a group of other people we don’t know).

Faith practice

For some students, college can be a time to deepen an existing faith practice; for others, it is a time to explore a new one, or to practice differently than before (or not at all).

Grades

Students have to grant you access in Workday to see their grades or to talk to administrators.

Healthcare

Your students will need to learn to navigate the healthcare system when they get sick, including making their own appointments.

Refer to this guide of healthcare topics you might wish to discuss and help your student understand before college begins.

Keep reading

If your student is managing a chronic condition, have some conversation about things they might want to be sure to talk to doctors and nurses about at each visit, how to advocate for themselves regarding their symptoms, etc.

If there are family health conditions that your students may not be aware of (such as family history of addiction), this might be a time to talk to them about their larger family’s medical family history, so they can be prepared with information they might need to tell their care providers.

Illness

Students over 18 have medical privacy rights and must give consent for doctors and nurses to speak to their loved ones. There is not a blanket form for students to grant access for the whole semester or year (because there may be some visits your student wants to keep private, and we don’t want a blanket form to be a barrier to students seeking needed care).

Keep reading

Your Deac can give their consent to speak to their loved ones at individual Deacon Health visits. If it is important to you to be able to speak to your student’s doctor or nurse, be sure to discuss that before school begins so they can grant permission at individual visits.

Mental health

Do everything you can to support and affirm help-seeking behavior in your students. It’s likely at some point in college, your student could find themselves anxious, depressed, etc. If your student knows that their family supports them in seeking care, that can be a huge boost to them in seeking help if they need it.

Keep reading

The JED Foundation has excellent resources available, including resources and tools related to mental health. If your student is already managing a mental health condition, talk about how best to continue that care in college.

Personal safety

First of all, ensure your student has downloaded the Wake Safe app on their phone. With Wake Safe, your student can use their cell phone as a personal security device that allows direct access to police, 911 emergency services, emergency location sharing, social escape, and a peer-to-peer Friend Walk tool.

Second of all, make sure you have also downloaded Wake Safe: Campus Safety Alerts are not sent to families via email; families must download the WakeSafe app to receive alerts; see more.

Keep reading

Discuss any topics about safety that matter to you: Do you have expectations that they don’t walk alone late at night, etc.? Does what you consider ‘safe’ align with their ideas?

While Wake Forest is a beautiful and well-run campus, we are situated within a small city. The unfortunate reality is that no amount of preparation or planning can make our campus and surrounding area immune to crime. Students are encouraged to use these safety recommendations from University Police.

Difficulties in the college transition

Before you drop your student off, make sure you have talked about some of the things they are likely to experience at some point:

loneliness
difficulty finding their niche
difficulty in making new friends
feeling homesick
feeling pressure to balance all their responsibilities (e.g., remembering to read their WFU email daily, checking the course syllabus for each class and making a plan to get their work done on time, etc.)

Keep reading

All of those things are normal and part of the transition process, but students rarely expect to feel things like loneliness when they are surrounded by over 1,400+ students who are new too.

Talk about this now, so that if loneliness or other emotions hit, your student will remember that this is something that happens to most students!

Social media

Two key topics to cover about social media:

Urge your students to be very careful when putting things on social media, because what they post can impact how others view them (and can last forever).
Remind them to treat their friends’ social media posts with some skepticism, particularly if their life looks perfect from their Instagram/Tik Tok, etc. Most people only share their carefully-curated best moments. Just because it looks like someone else’s life is better does not mean it is, so your Deacs should not don’t worry that all their friends from high school seem to have it better than they do (trust me: all new college students have struggles!)

Your family may have other topics that are important to you. Be sure to discuss those openly with your student before college starts. You may also want to explore tips for parents and families on our University Counseling Center website.

Review the Stop, Drop, and Roll Framework

We encourage families to review the Stop, Drop, and Roll framework to learn how best to support your students when they have issues, decisions to make, or routine tasks to complete.

View the Stop, Drop, and Roll Framework

Navigating Family and Student Roles

During the K-12 school years, families were encouraged to take an active part in their student’s education. In college, one of the goals is for students to develop independence, so families’ roles by definition must be different now.

Family members are still incredibly important – you are the key source of love and support for your student! In order to grow, college students need to make their own decisions. While in high school you might have been in a manager or director role with your students (where you provided directions and answers), in college it is more helpful to adopt a consultant role (where you serve as a sounding board to prompt their thinking, but allow your students to find their own answers).

Having role clarity can assist with the transition to college for students and families alike. Here are some suggestions on student vs. family roles.

The bottom line: In most cases, your Deac should be the one to do the work, make the call, ask the question, research the classes to take, give the feedback, etc. Our students need space to learn and grow, whereas your problem solving skills are already well-developed. This is their time to find their own way, make their own decisions (and mistakes!), and develop independence.