Advice for New Parents & Families

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

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.

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?)

How much spending money will your students have? Will you send a set amount each week/month/on request? Do they know how to budget? What do you expect to pay for? What (if anything) do you expect your student to pay for from their own money?

In terms of communication with your student: How often you will communicate? And 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.

In terms of communication about your student: some families find it helpful to connect with other WF families via Facebook groups that are not run by the University, 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 everyone is clear.

Ask before you disclose their 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).

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).

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

Your students will need to learn to navigate the healthcare system when they get sick, including making their own appointments. Please see this guide of healthcare topics you might wish to discuss and help your student understand before college begins.

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.

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).

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.

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. 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.

First of all, ensure your student has downloaded the Wake Safe app to their cellphone. 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.

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.

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
• how much effort it takes to make 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.)

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! See the Mentally Preparing for the Adjustment to College section for some additional ideas of what to discuss.

Two key topics to cover about social media: 1) be very careful what you put out on social media, because what you post can impact how others view you (and can last forever). 2) regard your 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 don’t worry that all your friends from high school seem to have it better than you do (they don’t!)