By West Michigan Conference
Pam Thompson has some good advice for parents sending a child off to college for the first … or the last time: “Share their excitement knowing they are about to have an enormous and exhilarating growth experience…and so are you!”
Photo from West Michigan Conference
Thompson, from Brentwood, Tenn., is practically a pro when it comes to stuffing the trunk of a college-bound car with duffel bags, favorite pillows and an occasional stuffed animal. She’s also experienced at using nooks and crannies for keepsakes and improvising when closet space is needed in dorm rooms. She’s had a lot of practice waving goodbye and holding back tears when summer’s end means she has to send her children down the road to college.
Although her 25-year-old son has conquered college and is now out in the real world, she and her husband, Chip, still have one more child to get out the door. Her 21-year-old daughter Shannon begins her senior year this fall at Birmingham Southern, a United Methodist related college in Birmingham, Ala.
You’d think the couple would have “letting go” down pat. In fact, you’d think that by now their worrying would wane, a quiet house would be welcome, and the freedom to go to a movie on a whim would outweigh the heartbreak of saying frequent see you laters. Well, sort of.
The stress of transitioning gets better, Thompson said, but not always easier. “I still can’t quite get used to seeing an empty chair at the dinner table,” she said. “Our family unit of four changed, and although it’s been a wonderful experience to see the kids you kissed goodbye return home with well-earned maturity and wisdom, the transition can be tough.”
Be there ‘as needed’
Jason Peevy, a counselor at Birmingham Southern, said the Thompsons’ experience with letting go of their college-age kids is pretty much the norm. Some parents handle it better than others.
Some call too much. Many text too much. Some go as far as submitting dorm maintenance requests, setting up campus appointments for their students and making too-frequent visits to the school.
“The parent needs to be there ‘as needed,’” Peevy said. “It’s OK to check in about a crisis situation, but students should be allowed and encouraged to work through their problems and make decisions on their own.”
Peevy, the father of boys 3 and 5, says raising a college student is not very different from parenting young children.
“With my boys, I want to be there to warn them to stay in the shallow end of the pool, watch over them so they don’t step in the middle of the street and catch them when they fall,” he said. “Though the issues are different, parents of 18-year-olds feel much the same way.”
Thompson said she knew that bad things would happen in her children’s lives during the four years they were in school, but she worried about whether she had taught them everything they needed to know about surviving those bad things.
“I knew life would knock them down,” she said. “But I wondered who would be there to pick them up when they experienced those big kicks in the gut.”
One of the things she regrets the most is missing her children’s important moments.
“You wish you could be there when they fall in love, get fired from a job or do badly on a test,” she said. “You want to love them through their first broken heart or when they hear from home that the family dog has died. And even though you know other people will be supporting them, it may not be the way you would or with the same values you have.”
Read the full article from West Michigan Conference.
