By: Laura Chackes
For many parents, this is a day we’ve been both dreaming of and dreading for years. When they’re babies and young children we wonder what they’ll do with their life, or joke about them becoming a lawyer because they argue so much. Sometime around middle to late childhood, most parents will start thinking about how much time they have left with their child and feel sad; but we can usually just push the feelings aside and live in the moment with our child.
As they enter high school and then especially senior year, it all starts to feel more real. You can feel the end approaching, and it is often very sad and scary for parents. The anticipatory grief starts around this time, as we prepare to send them off to college or wherever they will head after high school. All the hard work and planning tend to take over, so most of us will again get distracted and not spend too long sitting with these uncomfortable emotions.
When they graduate high school it tends to hit hard, this is really happening. However, nothing can prepare you for the weeks leading up to and after you actually drop them off at college.
I just went through this experience with my first born son, and was surprised at how many emotions I’ve been feeling. I noticed that I was dismissing my feelings saying things like, “well he will only be two hours away and I’ll still see him a lot,” and “he’s been independent for so long, I know he’s ready for this.” While all that is true, the emotions still rush in.
This is the part no one prepares us for as parents. There are so many emotions all at once, and they usually feel quite contradictory. Luckily, as a therapist I understand that it’s normal to feel multiple emotions at once, even contradictory ones.
We can feel heartbroken that this child who was our sole focus for the past 18 years is now not going to be living in our home any longer; while at the same time also extremely proud of them for getting to this place.
We can feel scared that they won’t be able to do all of this on their own, and maybe we haven’t prepared them enough, while also confident that they will ask for help and learn how to live without us.
We can miss their daily presence in our lives so deeply that it brings us to tears when we see a piece of their clothing on the floor, while at the same time so excited for all that they are experiencing in what many consider the best time of their lives.
Just before sending him off to college someone gave me this book, Letting Go: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding the College Years by Karen Levin Coburn and Madge Lawrence Treeger. That small gesture almost brought tears to my eyes, as somehow I never thought to look for a guide book on how to handle this. While I haven’t had a chance to read much of it yet, I’ll share a couple of things that stood out to me.
- The authors acknowledge that this transition can actually be harder on parents than on kids and talked about giving yourself permission to feel unsettled, and permission to grieve this shift even while celebrating it. I felt a lot of grace in knowing that this is normal.
- Last week as I was preparing to take him to college on Friday, I felt so excited for him but also just a little off or discombobulated. The authors describe the feeling as disequilibrium. Simply having a name for what I’m experiencing has been oddly comforting.
- In this era of constant communication, the book tackles the challenge we face of finding the balance between staying connected and letting go. They say that the key is quality over quantity. It’s not about perfect communication frequency, but rather ensuring that when students call, they’re seeking connection or guidance rather than expecting parents to solve their problems.
- Rather than jumping in to solve problems, we can best support our students by encouraging them to solve problems by using the resources of the college, and by just listening, which is often the best support.
I’m looking forward to continuing to read this book to both help me cope with this transition, but also to help me learn how to parent in this new stage of life.
The other thing that has really helped me is talking about how I’m feeling with friends and family, especially those going through it. If we keep emotions inside and try to push them away, they stay stuck and cause more distress. By venting to a friend, crying with your partner, or talking to a fellow parent, we start to heal. Just like with any loss, we have to acknowledge and allow all emotions to grieve
It feels strange to call it grieving since they are still alive and in our lives, but this is a major loss nonetheless. Acknowledging what we’re feeling and sharing those feelings with others is often the most powerful step towards feeling better.