Because sororities emphasize the academic, social, cultural, and service components of the college experience, we do encourage qualified students to seek affiliation at the earliest possible opportunity. This way they are able to take the fullest advantage of the benefits of collegiate membership. Also, the support and mentoring offered by chapter members and alumnae advisors can have a tremendous positive impact on their initial adjustment to college.

If your daughter is an upperclassman who is undecided about participating in recruitment, it would be a great idea for her to seek advice from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs (sometimes called Greek Life) on her campus. Although it is traditional at some schools for most participants in recruitment to be freshmen, sorority membership is for a lifetime.

If you daughter is seeking references, she should also seek them for all groups on the campus she will be attending. She may decide when she gets to campus her initial interest in certain groups change. Strongly encourage your daughter to go into recruitment with an open mind. Having a reference sent in will not be a problem should she change her mind about recruitment — most chapters will keep that reference on file in the event she decides at a later date to go through the process.

If there is not an Alumnae Panhellenic in your area, then you will need pick the location closest to you. If the Alumnae Panhellenic does not have a website you can refer to for contact information, you can contact the NPC office at npccentral@npcwomen.org to receive that information.

Some NPC member groups do allow for the initiation of women as an alumna (or post graduation), which could allow for initiation into an NPC member group that was not at the institution you attended.

A huge blessing in her affiliation with her sorority has been the service culture in which they have immersed her.  As a Millennial, she has grown up in a school system that has a focus on community service so she is open and looking for opportunities to work as a team toward a common goal to make a difference.  Through her sorority, she had many opportunities to have an impact on others.

The volunteer experiences she had have run the gamut:  Sundaes on Sunday, helping young women do their hair, nails, and make up for the School for the Blind prom, reading for the blind, nursing home visits, various walks for hearts, for cures, for life…the infamous Dance Marathon.  There were numerous other events including her support of her other sorority and fraternity friends’ chapter philanthropies across campus.

Delta Gamma's Spring Ice Cream Social Fund Raiser

Certainly all of these experiences have prepared her for a lifetime of giving back in whatever community she settles in upon graduation.  I am so grateful that her Greek experience has fostered this in such a fun and rewarding way, and it is yet another important aspect of sorority life that we need to appreciate for our Greek affiliated daughters.

“Don’t cry because it’s over.  Smile because it happened.”

My fellow NPC blogger, Mary Beth Rice, cited Seuss’s passage in one of her earlier essays and I can’t thank her enough.  The words were my mantra throughout the graduation festivities.

So, I am trying to be a Pollyanna Parent.  I am trying to be glad that it happened – the education and the sorority experience.  I am trying to smile.  But darn it, I am jealous of the parents who have daughters on the verge on this wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime, exhilarating, four-year experience.

I would trade places with them in a moment to relive the little individual events that my daughter shared with me:   Bid Day – posters and poems from “big sisters” –  initiation –  conventions  -  recruitment preparation –  father/daughter events – sorority-motif gift buying -  scholarship dinners – the million printed T-shirts.

I would trade places with them in a moment to appreciate the onset of “bigger picture” happenings:  learning to communicate with my daughter in a new way (Mary Beth wrote about texting, for my daughter and me it was Instant Messaging) -  the making of life-long friendships -  watching my daughter and her sorority sisters learning to take larger and larger responsibilities in the chapter and on campus.  Just thinking about all of this makes me tearful as I swell with pride – I’d better review the Seuss words again.

OK, as I bid sororityparents.com and my daughter’s undergraduate college experience a fond farewell, I am going to smile because it happened.  Also, if I want to relive this experience, I think my daughter might have some photos I can look at.  (Did I ever mention the copious amount of photos these girls take?  Oh my gosh.)

As I reflect on my relationships with all of these special women, the women in my circle with sorority affiliations are certainly on that list –and with great fondness.  Though my mom and I do not share the same sorority membership (She is delighted to be Pi Beta Phi as I am blessed to be a Delta Gamma!), her love of her collegiate experience was shared with me throughout my childhood through the stories she told me and in the special women she introduced me to as her Pi Phi sisters while I was growing up.  I always hoped I would have that same opportunity to forge lifelong friendships.

I so enjoyed the family structure within my own chapter and have several humorous and warm hearted memories of special moments with my own pledge “mom”, Amy, and pledge “daughter”, Anne.  Delta Gamma Mom’s Day was also looked forward to each spring as we paid special tribute to our own dear mothers, shared a wonderful meal of sorts, and then hit the mall for some shopping –financed by mom to no one’s surprise?!

Because my daughter and I do have the same sorority affiliation, we are doubly blessed and our chapter provides many experiences for us to share that enrich our traditional mom-daughter relationship. Of all the things I enjoyed watching Mary Claire experience this year, witnessing her relationships bloom with her new sisters was incredible.

The bond between mothers and daughters is passionately strong. While in graduate school, I remember reading an article shared with me by a good friend (and Delta Gamma sister) about the “Adolescent Daughter/Midlife Mother Dyad” and how complicated it can be –sounds way too academic as I drink coffee this morning trying to rally my mind and body around several cold windy baseball games I am traveling to later this morning but bear with me?! Although I had no children at the time, I somehow knew that I needed to tuck the wisdom from that article somewhere in my heart to utilize on another day (and who knew it could be 20 years later?)

The just of the article discussed the similarities that teenage daughters have with their middle aged moms: those of identity formation (she is trying to discover hers while we are trying to reinvent ours), and the insecurity and frustration that might come from transitions physically as our bodies develop, emotionally as relationships change, and intellectually as we add new experiences in our lives and try to make sense of them.

Certainly Mary Claire and I have both made adjustments and transitions the past few years. She has stretched herself in her development of a wider array of friends, in having her basic values challenged by others around her socially and emotionally, and in finding and maintaining a rhythm of time management and growth in her academic discipline to name a few.  (And me…well the only adjustments that come to mind at this early hour involve hot flashes and middle of the night alertness issues but I will get back to you on the other ones soon!)

Back to the point of the article as I ramble on in this blog– to suggest that instead of “butting heads” or taking out our moods and stress on one another, we should be eachother’s support, lifting up and encouraging one another with enthusiasm, tenderness and a sense of humor so to share our energy and hope for what is to come.  There…whew…heavy stuff to ponder on a sunny, windy, cold Nebraska morning… On this year’s official Mother’s Day weekend, I wish all of you a wonderful time celebrating with those you love most.

I’ve experienced the birth of babies and there is nothing like it: when a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe.

- Madeleine L’ Engle, author and Mother

Delta Gamma Mom's Day 2010

Last weekend a group of my sorority friends gathered in Monmouth, Illinois (isn’t that where you’ve always wanted to go?  Birthplace of Wyatt Earp!!!) to celebrate  Founders’ Day at the founding site of Pi Beta Phi: Holt House, at Monmouth College.  Two of the group had already been to Holt House, but for the rest of us, it was a place we had learned about at our first formal sorority “new member” meeting, many, many years ago. 

Monmouth is utterly charming and Founders’ Day at Holt House, with the local Pi Phi chapter, was more delightful than we could have imagined.

Who did I travel with?  It wasn’t with pledge sisters, and it wasn’t even with members of my particular chapter.  I traveled with “new” friends.  The nine of us represented nine different college campuses and we had met as alums, while serving our sorority as national officers.  What a great traveling group – if you like tremendously capable participators, who laugh a lot. 

(I'm the one in the lower right corner)

Here is my point – sorority membership makes it possible to continue to make dear friends who share similar values after college – through alum clubs and through service to the sorority organization.  The “new friend” making, the fun, the laughing, the working together for a common purpose, is not just for the collegians

Drug and Alcohol counselors will all say that a tough love approach is the best course for friends who are consistently practicing risky behaviors. There is a saying: Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a pattern. Doing a favor once for a friend is kind but repeatedly rescuing that friend will only enable the poor choices he/she is making.  Every campus and some Greek Fraternities and Sororities have designated driver programs or taxi services that can be utilized to get a safe ride home late in the evening. Here are some things a parent can do to encourage one’s daughter to make safe choices:

1. Encourage your daughter to create a list of these local services with their contact information. Include the community taxi cab service as well. She can put these phone numbers in her own cell phone and share this list with a friend who may be calling her for rides late at night.

2. Teach your daughter about safe boundaries so she can take care of herself while still feeling like she is being a supportive friend. Discuss the concepts of ‘enabling others’ and ‘boundary setting’, emphasizing that these are key life and relational skills. Suggesting her phone be set to silence or vibrate while she sleeps at night might give her some consistent blocks of healthy sleep.

3. If your daughter is moving home for the summer break and anytime she is sleeping under your roof, make sure and pre teach the family rules and constructively set your own personal boundaries of curfews and other rules that need to be followed to maintain a healthy family culture.

Realizing that we do not control the choices of others, we can still lovingly communicate expectations and hopes for these precious people in our lives…