I'm not saying that's not admirable but shouldn't your adult child have this figured out by now?

I don't think it is the norm to have your stuff figured out by the time you reach college

Stuff figured out = waking up on time for an exam? There are certainly things that aren't going to be figured out by college but dang, you're setting the bar madd low.

Yeah, I missed my 8am class a few times, but I never missed a final.

It's figuring out how not to oversleep for an important occasion, not figuring out the meaning of life... I mean, some people this age are working responsible jobs or serving in the military.

Swallowing your pride and asking your parent (or someone else) for help is a pretty adult thing to do.

Yes, certainly. No argument. But when the stakes are high, a little back up doesn't hurt. It is just as much an excuse for some last minute good wishes anyway.

In any case, everybody has different circumstances. Parenting is an improvisational pursuit, every kid has different needs. In my kid's case, end-of-semester sleep deprivation has more than typical impact because of hypothyroidism that requires carefully adjusted medication and really benefits from a regular sleep schedule. Engineering school? Regular sleep schedule? Pffft. So I cut some slack. Their tendency to over-sleep alarms is partly wonky body chemistry.

I recall oversleeping for a final. Luckily, it was an intro programming, you-mean-I-can't-test-out-of-this?? class. I walked in a hour late, and left a 1/2 hour early. Had that been DiffEQ or similar.... errrf.

You've never accidentally slept through an alarm before? Why not have a backup plan just to be extra sure? That sounds perfectly responsible to me.

Sure, but your backup plan probably should not involve one of your parents getting up extra early to give you a wake up call. But to each their own, I guess.

This is one of the reasons that pre-booking taxis is a good idea. Typically, they'll call you when they arrive, so they are a really good back-up alarm clock.

This is common, or at least, I've definitely had my parents do this for me, and I know my friends have too.

The logic is as follows: I need to be up early, my parents always get up early, and my alarm almost always works. If I have both to wake me up, there's a good chance I won't accidentally sleep in.

This is rewarding bad behavior. The offspring should be conditioned to awaken themselves by having an unpleasant experience occur when they don't awaken when expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning

Missing a final could easily be a life-altering event, so I don't think it really makes sense in this case.

As long as it's a rare occurrence, I don't really see the problem here.

Punishment has never been an efficient way of changing behavior.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-our-way/2014...

Nobody wants to avoid the behavior when punishment is introduced, they want to avoid the punishment itself. Typically speaking, this is done by circumventing the punishment, rather than correcting the behavior. Besides, (almost) nobody purposely sleeps through their final - especially not if they take the time to ask someone to be a backup alarm. You'd be advocating for punishment of an accident at that point, which is aggressively useless at best, and sadistic at worst.

I'm pretty sure the consensus is that positive reinforcement, when used consistently and over a long time, can be used without any negative reinforcement and still get the requisite training results. That's leaving aside the fact that negative reinforcement is bad for the relationship with your child and/or pet.

Completely on this subject though, I find the behaviour in question here insane. Mostly because adults are supposed to be independent and competent. Of course, not everyone is raised equally. If this works for them, who are we to judge?

That's a really inefficient way to train good behavior.

The alternative is every one gets a gold star for waking up on time.

Lol, no. This is not a dichotomy.

That's why you learn stuff like this before you're in friggin college.

The offspring wakes up at the time determined or else the offspring gets the hose again.

Just go to bed earlier?

I recently decided to wake up earlier (have kids, wanted an hour or so to myself before they woke up), so I started going to get earlier. Instead of an alarm in the morning, I have an alarm at night so I remember to go to bed on time.

For something as important as a final, you should be getting a full night's rest. It's just not worth whatever little you can cram in the night before.

Having a physical being call you before important event is absolutely sane. And I give explicit instructions - do not hang up until you hear me in the shower

If something is that important, I schedule something just before. E.g. for a final, I'll schedule an hour of study right before and go to bed early. That way if I'm late to that first thing in the morning, I still make the important event.

The only time I asked someone to wake me up was for an early morning (started at 7 or something) class I took with my roommate. We went together, so we agreed that we'd both make sure the other was up. After that semester, I never signed up for an early morning class again (but I did okay in the class though!).