Senior Care: Respect, Understanding Kindness Can Quiet Fears

Jim Waterbury, Parent Times Online

We college parents spend a lot of time fretting about our freshmen. That’s understandable because freshmen enter college pretty much like Tom Hanks hit the island in Cast Away. One moment, entering freshmen are safe and snug at home, basking in their last summer of innocence. The next, they are in over their heads, spluttering and spitting in choppy seas, struggling toward shore through breakers and boxes. A few freshmen do wash out, but most find both their footing and a whole new world in reasonably short order. It helps that they also find thousands of other people sharing their new academic island. Even if your freshman hits double zero in the game of roommate roulette, no one really has to befriend a volleyball just for companionship on campus, as Hanks did on his island.

College freshmen are easy to worry about. We all understand that going off to school is a sink-or-swim proposition. But let’s spare at least a little parental concern for kids who have demons of their own to wrestle that are less obvious but just as scary. Those kids have a name, too. We call them seniors.

High school seniors appear to be sitting on top of their world, and most of them thoroughly enjoy the ride. But seniors figure out by spring of their senior year that things will change at graduation. Some have been stewing about the coming change all year long. And why shouldn't they? Graduation means change. Change frightens people. And high school seniors, despite outward appearances and behaviors, are real people with real worries. Whether high school seniors admit it or not, leaving home tops the list. Picking the wrong college is a close second.

College seniors have their own terrors. Many are sweating out graduate school admission. More than a few are trying to decide whether to marry, bum around the world for a year, or move back home with Mom and Dad—at a time in their lives when those seem like perfectly reasonable alternatives. But all seniors are quietly consumed with the universal fear that they will leave school and then fail to find a job, a mate, a home, and a place in the world. Parents dismiss those worries because we know better. But what we forget is that our knowledge comes from experience. Our college seniors don’t have any experience yet. And trying to tell them they will succeed just because we did is a waste of time. Despite our outward appearances and behaviors, we parents are not real people with real lives to our kids. We are and ever shall be simply Mom and Dad. But there are several things we can do both as parents and as adults to help our senior students.

First, we can anticipate their fears and reassure them that it’s both normal and healthy to feel some anxiety about the unknown. Second, we can talk with our senior students about their fears. No one likes to appear uncool at any age, but admitting fears and worries is especially difficult for young people to do at the very moment society tells them they have grown up. Third, we can remember how much a kind word or a welcoming gesture means to kids asking for acceptance and validation. Students looking for college admission or first jobs in the real world have their hearts and their egos on their sleeve.

Parents, admissions officers, and employers do themselves an enormous favor by taking these students seriously, treating them with respect, and remembering the power of kindness and understanding.

Finally, we can help our kids’ friends. The kids who have cleaned out your refrigerator and slept on your floors over the years like you and trust you. Whether you know it or not, they have honored you with their presence for providing a comfortable place where they feel safe. They’ll never ask for it, but they want and need your approval, too. Make sure they get it.

Senior students assume they have to know it all, and they labor under the weight of knowing they don’t. They need to hear the truth. No one ever knows it all, and no one ever should. The joy in getting up in the morning is learning something new. Seniors have whole new worlds to explore. It’s our job as parents to encourage them to jump into the water and swim toward shore.

Parents Say Goodbye: The Last Summer Before College

Carleton Kendrick, familyeducation.com

Dancing in the Streets
"Both kids in college now, Carleton? Just you and your wife at home? You must be dancing in the streets!" Such was the jist of almost all the comments directed my way upon my second (and last) child's departure to college. But I wasn't dancing. I wasn't even whistling. Family life without my kids around would be bittersweet -- a word I couldn't help using over and over during the summers before they left.

Birds Gotta Fly...
I knew this was supposed to happen. Kids leave the nest. Forge healthy adult identities unencumbered by their parents. Get that college education we've all been conditioned to believe is crucial to their success and happiness.

My Mind Questions . . .
So, if they were experiencing this major developmental milestone in relatively good shape, why was I a mess inside? Why was my happiness for them coupled with a sadness for myself? Why was my pride and joy for my kids tainted by my anxieties and regrets?

My Heart Answers
My answers came, with some hesitation, from that voice in my heart that always tells the truth. "You love them deeply. You like living with them, as a family. You'll miss them terribly. You wonder if you've been a good enough father, if you've prepared them well for their 'launch.' It has been 22 years since you and your wife have lived together without children. As a couple, will you weather this transition? You're not needed as an everyday parent anymore." My heart's voice is truthful, but not always kind.

We made it through those summers. I still miss them dearly. They're growing up, as they should. And we all move on with our new lives, always a family.

Tips for Parents
As a recent veteran of two bittersweet departures for college, I offer you some guidelines on making the best of this highly emotional time:

• Acknowledge your mixed emotions to yourself and to your departing child. Realize that if you act emotionally disabled, your kids worry more about leaving you.
• Share your feelings about this new stage of your life with those who are supportive and with those who have been through this transition.
• Think about and plan how you'll use all that emotional energy and time you've formerly devoted to parenting.
• Allow yourself to trust in your child's ability to make sound judgments on her own. It helps when she can feel your trust.
• When your child expresses fears and uncertainties about leaving and "making it" in college, let him know that everyone has these misgivings. Tell him you are confident in his abilities to both "make it" and enjoy it. Make references to some of his past challenges and successes.
• Make sure you consider the feelings (most often intense and confused) of your other kids. They need their own sibling good-byes and reassurances.
• Don't feel ignored or hurt because your child wants to spend every waking moment with her friends. Desperate attempts to spend an endless summer with friends is a natural response to leaving them.
• You and your college child may unconsciously create considerably more tension and disagreements than usual in an effort to make leaving more desirable.