Anxious about your child’s first semester at college?
The impossible has happened. Your newborn baby learned to roll over. Then she learned to walk. He later went to his first day of kindergarten. And, all of a sudden, she graduated from high school. Now your 'baby,' well, your now 18-year-old baby, has left home and moved away to college. In the blink of an eye, your baby has become a young adult who no longer lives with you full-time.
Many parents experience anxiety when their children leave for college. Even those of us who swore that we would never become the dreaded 'helicopter parent' find ourselves anxiously hovering around our kids when they leave for college. We call, we text, and we plead for photos of our kids and their new surroundings. We are frantic for reassurance that our kids are okay on their own at college.
We ask questions like:
How's the food?
Is your roommate nice?
Did you meet with your advisor?
Do you have your asthma inhaler in your backpack?
Did you make it to your 8 am class?
Are you getting enough sleep?
Rather than receiving in-depth answers to our questions, we may receive brief and superficial responses like "The classes are fine" or "I'm ok, Mom/Dad." Rather than accepting these simple responses, we tend to continue peppering them with more questions in hopes of some information.
When all of our well-meaning (but potentially annoying) questions are not immediately or sufficiently answered, we may begin to feel disrespected or indignant. We may feel that our kids 'owe' us the respect of answering our questions or taking the time to call us rather than text us. In moments of anger, we may be tempted to remind them of the sacrifices that we've made so that they could attend college. We may even feel the urge to discipline them for their 'rude' behavior.
In these moments, it's important that we pause before lashing out. We need to remember that our kids may want, or even need, less contact with us at the start of their college experience. Not because they don't love us or value our support, but because excessive contact with us may increase their sense of homesickness. By temporarily denying their dependence on us as parents, it may make it easier for them to feel grown up and strong. It also may help them to avoid appearing weak or homesick in front of their newfound friends.
The other harsh truth of this equation is that the hole in our hearts as parents may be deeper than the sadness that our kids feel when they leave home for college. For us, we are staring at an empty bedroom or a vacant chair at the dining room table. We miss our child's unique laugh, their questionable taste in music, and we may even miss folding their laundry. Our son or daughter, on the other hand, is getting an opportunity to reinvent themselves in a brand new place.
So, how can we best communicate with our fledgling adult children when they attend college?
1. Tell them that you understand that they may not be consistently available to talk on the phone so ask them to set up a day or time that might work best for them to talk with you.
2. Express to your son or daughter that while you respect their newfound independence that you still need to know how they are doing at school so that you can support them during this transition.
3. Focus your areas of interest. Although we may wish to know everything about how our son or daughter is doing at school, we may need to be patient. The three most important areas about which to communicate are: health, happiness, and academic success. If we can obtain sufficient information about how our son or daughter is doing in these areas, we can tolerate waiting to learn more about residential life or the quality of dining services.
As much time and energy as we've spent preparing our kids to enter the adult world, we are never fully prepared to let them go. Learning how to communicate with your son or daughter in a supportive but respectful way will require some trial and error. Just like we did when they first learned to walk, we quietly walk behind them in the event that they fall. Now that they are college freshmen, we do the same thing. We learn to quietly and gently monitor our adult children so that we are poised to support them in the event that they want or need our help.
This article originally appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer.