Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
Navigating the College Transition: Parenting, Independence, and Embracing Change
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Have you ever felt a pang of anxiety as your teenager prepares to transition into college life? You're not alone. This episode of Legit Parenting takes you on a heartfelt journey through the emotional rollercoaster parents experience as their children step into independence. We unravel the complexities of modern parenting, where smaller family sizes and constant connectivity challenge traditional notions of letting go. Drawing insights from a Wall Street Journal article, we explore the trend of "surveillance parents" and the necessity of cutting the cord of constant involvement.
The evolution of parent-child communication has dramatically shifted from the days of dial-up internet to the perpetual reach of Life360. Through humorous anecdotes and real-life stories, we discuss the fine line between maintaining safety and fostering independence.
Parenting Stress and College Students
Speaker 1Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step-parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, sydney Moreau, who also happens to be the mother of a college student, and we're going to be focusing on the college students today as we start a new series Parents Under Stress. Now, my book that came out a year ago was already targeting that, and especially the introduction in the first chapter, because parents were shown lots of signs of stress and then about a month ago, our attorney general came out with a health advisory about parents under stress. So we're going to do some shorter shows on that topic and how it relates to your stress and pick some specific areas to talk about in a long series and, given the time of year it is here it is the beginning of October I thought I'd start with those freshmen at college and when you're a parent of a college student, and we'll talk a little bit if you have a senior in high school right now, because this is a particularly stressful time. I was also nudged into the topic today by an article I read in the Wall Street Journal, which I'll be talking about today. The title is Surveillance Parents Face the Ultimate Firewall Freshman Year and you go from being this very involved parent and now all of a sudden you're cut out, but not so much from what the colleges are trying to do, but I'll have some advice on what I think you should be doing as a parent of one that age. And it's all about if you're a parent of younger kids. It's the topic, the things we'll discuss. It's about starting when they're younger, so they're ready for college. First, I do want to thank Dr Ortiz for our last show talking about promoting independence in your kids and learning to let them be independent, learn how to handle that as a parent.
Speaker 2I thought he was fabulous and really it's his kind of work Doing that work when they're younger will really pay off when they're ready to go to college and ready to go to work. I mentioned to him after the show. I said it's amazing he's a professor and I said you're so articulate with all the names of the various psychological concepts that we were talking about. I was just fascinated by him and I said I'm more of that in the trenches kind of guy. I'm swinging the sword of mental health down on the battlefield and he's up there prophesizing and knowing all the fancy terms. But he was great. I really enjoyed the show. So I checked that out as well.
Speaker 2Now to get us started on this process of talking about your college students or your seniors, your juniors in high school. There's really a couple developmental tasks that are essential for this age group. The biggest ones for your teen, young adult, virgin or young adult, is to really start to having their own autonomy, away from you, and that means learning how to solve problems, establishing who they are, away from their parents. They have to have failures and learn from those and learn how to bounce back with the support of their peers and their professors. That's their job Now. For parents, that requires cutting the cord of constant involvement with them and even though you want to be involved more, this is really a time where you need to be involved less, other than the pocketbook. That doesn't go away and it is expensive. But there is this natural anxiety for parents. All their lives, you worry about their safety and their development and as they start to leave the nest, it is a very anxiety-producing time and when you see them fail or fall, you want to swoop in and rescue them or warn them about be careful, this won't work out well for you and you want to give them lots of advice, but some of those things they need to do.
Speaker 2Now there's a couple of things that have made that process more difficult for parents. One I love this from a sociological standpoint. Right now, our country's birth rate is below replacement rate. Last time I checked it, I think we're at 1.9, 1.8 children and you need two to replace replace parents. Right, replacement rate is how many kids do you need to have to keep the state, the population, stable?
Speaker 2Now, back in the 50s, 60s, 70s we were there were five kids in my family. That was the norm. Five was a standard. I had friends with eight siblings. One of my dear friends was one of 12 siblings.
Speaker 2Families were huge and if you think about our ancient history in agriculture, you needed big families to help run the farm and go to work and do things. But our family size are much smaller. So many of our families now have one child, some two, some three, but the larger family size it's really dropped, and what that means is that you have limited eggs in your basket. So instead of mama bird feeding six or eight and taking care of them, realizing that they're not all going to survive, you only have one or two. So that means you're focusing more time, energy and money on your offspring to guarantee their futures. And we do know from the AG Charter General's report, which has got a ton of great research, that families now are spending more time with their kids. They're spending more money on their kids and doing more in the household than they ever have before. It's like at record levels, and for men it's gone up huge amounts of men's involvement with their kids. Now what's funny about that? Before we chew for all the dads out there, it has been a huge increase for males, but for the dads, but compared to moms, we're not even close. Moms bury most of the weight of it all.
Speaker 2The second thing that I think contributes to this whole difficult process of letting go and off to college is the smartphones, your fears and your young adult independence, and they're trying to establish themselves and you're worried about them. The access to you through the cell phone, wherever they are in the world, is just instantaneous and it really puts this whole dynamic on steroids. So immediately the kid's first response is to call mom or dad and get a quick fix. Then they call you. You're worried, you want to help them out, you want to fix it, and that just leads to more dependency and does not promote independence. So I want to read a couple of clips out of the article and then we'll delve into it further and I'll give you some what I consider good tips for dealing with this age group. I'll start by reading just the first couple paragraphs to set the tone.
Speaker 2As this year's freshmen acclimate to college life, their parents confront a big adjustment. After years of peering into teachers' grade books for the real-time updates and stalking their children on Life 360, they now find themselves regulated to the sidelines. That doesn't mean their offspring stop asking for help. What's a parent to do when your child complains about a humid dorm room or a loud roommate? Is continued smartphone surveillance advisable and if so, how should they handle knowing junior isn't waking up for class? So many questions. A burgeoning support network for parents of college kids and a proliferating number of special parent liaison offices at colleges are swooping in to help. Last fall, laura Becker, an Atlanta mother of two college students, launched the Facebook group After the Drop-Off Parenting Through the College Years. It has exploded into 12,500 members and some days Becker's field's 100 requests to join. So if you're out there listening to this, thinking yeah, that's me you're not alone. There's lots of parents.
Speaker 2Now, later on in the article, I picked up this piece. I was really struck by it. Universities are grappling with today's hyper-connected reality. Now, 44% of parents interact daily with their kids at college, up from 37% in 2023, according to polls on Campus ESP, a platform to help college boost parent engagement. Long gone are the days of college students checking with parents on a weekly or less frequent schedule. Duquesne University's Margie did clear in 2023 about relating to their parent audience. Not only do parents chat more with their kids, some 70% now expect at least weekly communications from the college itself.
Speaker 2Now, when I went to school Sidney, I don't know about your generation when I can still remember the day I was standing on the curbside when my parents drove away going. Oh my God, I'm all alone. I don't know anyone here. But within five minutes I was having a great time and it was the standard Sunday evening calls after six o'clock. At&t owned the world back then and the rates were lower on Sunday after 6. So we would line up.
Parent-Child Communication and Independence
Speaker 2There was one phone in the dormitory and you would try to get your chance to use the phone, and it was like a five-minute call. And then my dad ended abruptly by saying well, we don't want to run up the rate on the bill, and that was it. And the only time that college ever reached out to parents was to say your child's being dismissed. That's it. There was no contact with the school. I also saw a piece on Instagram about on average, parents average four emails about their kids every day and they just can't keep up with them all, and so they just ignore them or don't respond to them, and then they end up feeling guilt and shame that they're not on top of everything which, by the way, you don't need to be on top of everything and it's probably detrimental to your child's development. If you are Cindy, what was the deal back in your generation?
Speaker 3I think that dial-up had just come up into the world dial-up internet. So I think there was always a phone line. We had calling cards. You'd have a number of minutes on a calling card. I don't think cell phones were until after college, I don't remember. But, I don't think they were until after college.
Speaker 2And you probably weren't having that much contact with your prayer.
Speaker 3Oh no, you didn't want to Now.
Speaker 2If you could see the look on her face when she said that oh, that's gross. Who would want to do that? That's exactly what I'm talking about. The impulse to get to that age is to want your parents out of it and you want to set up your own self-identity. You want to solve your own problems and you don't want them to know about the problems you're having.
Speaker 3No, definitely not.
Speaker 2And now it's all the reverse. It's the same thing with high school kids wanting their parents to track where their location is. Would you have wanted your parents to know where you were at college 24-7?
Speaker 3Craig, I'd probably be dead because my parents would have killed me.
Speaker 2My dad probably would have taken me out of school.
Speaker 3That was. You got in trouble and you ran the streets and did your stuff and you used pay phones all your parents and check in now and then, but no, I didn't. But I also have kids and I don't check their locations but I do, like my daughter has her locations on my son when he was younger, before he went to college, like it was a rite of passage as soon as he was, I don't remember like 17, 18. He's I'm turning it off mom.
Speaker 2Like oh, that's great A strike for independence and it fills off that. I never agreed to it. I've never put it on any of my kids' phones, I just abhorred that idea.
Speaker 3The only reason that I did. We use that. It was called life 360.
Speaker 2And then yeah, because.
Speaker 3So this is before things became more sophisticated, where it would alert you if there was a they got in a car accident. So, that made sense to me.
Speaker 3I was like, okay, so that works. But now and then, and my oldest, who's 22 now, he is an avid mountain biker and he will turn his location on when he's riding because he rides alone, just as a safety thing. But it's not something that we really use. I don't use it, I don't check it unless there's like a genuine concern. But I'm not sitting there hovering. I never have been hovering.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's enough. We purchased when my son was in high school for climbing 14ers in the mountains. It's called Spot 360. It's a satellite device that if you were to fall on the mountain or get lost, you press a button and it sends out an alert that you need to be rescued. I guess you do that with your phone now, but that made a lot of sense. In fact, they just got the renewal notice yesterday. I'm like, oh yeah, he's still climbing, we'll keep it. I don't do a lot of mountains anymore, but it makes sense for safety. I'm curious Now, has Harrison graduated?
Speaker 3No, he'll graduate this year.
Speaker 2This year. Okay, so he's been away four years now.
Speaker 3Yeah, this will be his fourth year.
Speaker 2Yeah, what's the frequency you check in with him?
Speaker 3What's interesting is, he calls me almost every single day.
Speaker 2Does he really?
Speaker 3He really does. He calls myself and his dad every single day, talking about parent guilt. Sometimes I feel guilty because he's always calling me and I'm not calling him. So I'm like I hope he doesn't feel like I don't care or I'm not interested, but he always beats me to it. He'll leave work and he'll call me at five or six o'clock in the afternoon, but he and it's rare that I don't hear from him He'll always check in with me.
Speaker 2And what's the nature of the check-in the conversation he just wants to see how I am.
Speaker 3Tell me about his day. It's never. He's a very independent kid, like. He's not the kid that I had to worry about not doing his laundry or not knowing how to cook or something like paying his bills or anything like that, but it's usually just like how are you? He's got two younger siblings. How are they? What are you guys doing? Had a test, had an interview, it's stuff like that. It's updates, yeah.
Speaker 2It doesn't sound like. What this article addresses is how many of the kids call home when they have a problem. It's funny, it's like updates, it's updates. Yeah, it doesn't sound like what this article addresses is how many of the kids call home when they have a problem.
Speaker 3It's funny. There's a Instagram account. I can see if I can find it, but it's a guy. I think it's called the Layton Show or something like that. Let me see if I can find it. But he posts texts from college kids yeah, and it'll be like what size is my shoe? Or um Taco Bell, a federal government thing. These questions are so funny that kids ask you know, like hilarious questions that you've ever seen.
Speaker 2But it's like the competency of kids. What size is my shoe? I think they put that on the inside of their shoe. I don't know how you would get that old without knowing it.
Speaker 3There was another one and it said like how do I get the clothes out of the washing machine? Do I reach my hand in there and just pull them out?
Speaker 2Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3These questions were? These texts from these kids are hilarious.
Speaker 2But it's kind of true. Yeah, it is, and that's that. So for the young adults out there, the college students, their lack of independence and learning things earlier so they're ready to go to school. Or when I was in school, you leaned on your friends, your actual friends, your roommates, your fraternity brothers, your roommates, your fraternity brothers, and two, my kids certainly have more independence in the house, like expectations where you do your own laundry at a certain point.
Speaker 3You're right.
Speaker 2And they should be learning.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I can remember being young probably in elementary school and running the dishwasher, not knowing you had to put dishwasher detergent in there, and I put dish soap in there instead.
Speaker 2Oh, there you go, bubble and like suds all over, but that was how you learned.
Speaker 1You like figured it out you were young.
Speaker 2I was young I was little you know how to do it later on I cracked up when we were talking about your parents and knowing where you are. There was a mention in this article about a mom who wrote to this parent support group that she noticed that her son wasn't sleeping in his dorm room because she had the tracker on. What should she do? Oh my gosh, he's probably sleeping with his girlfriend, or he's passed out in a frat house. He doesn't?
Speaker 3really want you to know where he is. I told you I think I mentioned it on a show before at some point when Harrison went off to college. So the college that he goes to there's a Facebook account. I call it the crazy mom board because it's this Facebook account and it's connected to the school and these moms will ask these questions and they're completely like micromanaging their kid in these questions. So they'll be like does anybody know a laundry service that I can send to my son's room? He hasn't done his laundry in two weeks. Does anybody know? Yeah, and these moms are it's. I think it's probably 90% moms, 99% moms and they like does? Can somebody go check on my son? He's sick? Can somebody bring cookies to my daughter? She's having a hard day? These questions are in this.
Speaker 2It's the micro-management that we're involved. When you're supposed to be learning how to do your own wash, or ask friends or have your friends help you. When you're sick or having a tough day, you turn to your girlfriends, your boyfriends and buddies and you cope with it that way.
Speaker 3Yep exactly.
Speaker 2Versus contacting the parents and then parents immediately shelling out money to fix it. So now we'll pay for laundry service, and it just goes on and on. And kids in general they're leeches, They'll take whatever. They're like dogs. If you give them cookies, they'll take more cookies. It's never going to stop, they just want more.
Speaker 3I tell my friends, as they have kids that are getting like in high school and college, two things, because I had my kids pretty much the first, so my kids are a little bit older than a lot of my friends and I told my advice to them is remember your kids can do a lot of things that you can do like you forget when they're little and they can't, but then they can and I'm like then they can and you want to turn it over to them as quick as possible.
Speaker 2Yes, if you don't, they're going to keep letting you do it for. They'll just let you do whatever, and I better turn would be the if you give the mouse a cookie.
Speaker 3Yeah, you can want more. And the second thing I tell them is you can say no. Yeah, you can say no. And I'm like like one of my kids is an amazing negotiator, could be a lawyer. And I am like no. And then there's a discussion and I'm like still, no, I'm not doing it. No, you can say no.
Speaker 2You can say no. You can say you don't have to offer an explanation Exactly. You don't always have to explain why.
Speaker 3No.
Speaker 2Yeah, you don't. Parents out there with younger ones, you don't always have to explain why, or feel guilty or feel guilty for saying no, you can make the case. The kids ask why, and then they learn more about the adult world and how the adult world works. But most of the time, when you explain why, they come up with an explanation of why you should.
Speaker 3And why you're wrong.
Speaker 2And they'll work that until they get what they want.
Speaker 3Yes, and it's relentless.
Speaker 2Okay. Now this is interesting. This is how the colleges are responding, and it's a mixed deal. So colleges have learned about campus resources and parents have received crucial messages from administrators. The big message was your kid is going to fail at some point and we're asking you not to stop and solve it for them, recalls Susan somebody, a teacher from Chicago suburbs. I was so glad they said that out loud. It's easier said than done, but we all need to hear that that your kid is going to fail. They need to learn how to solve it Now. At the same time, colleges are responding to this barrage of communications from schools.
Speaker 2One mother recently received an email guiding parents to remind their children about the add-drop deadline. It's just that parents might say are you planning on adding or dropping a class? Oh, they're giving this to my son. Now, if you're a kid in college and they can't figure out the drop-in date, that's a really critical deadline. That's when you take a class and you're a couple weeks into it and you're failing and it's over your head. You drop it and it doesn't go on your record. I knew those deadlines freshman year. That's essential basic knowledge for any college student. But now the parents have to remind their kid of that when they should be thinking about that themselves. And if they don't meet the deadline and they take the class and fail it, it's on their record and they have to take it again. Too bad, so sad that they got to learn from it. Parents are becoming here's another point from college. Parents are becoming friends with their students, she says, and are inclined to do things for them instead of teaching them how to be independent. So worried for my child.
Speaker 2A mother posted recently on another parent support Facebook group with 24,000 members Her kitty texted from college about a human room, broken laundry card and other small inconveniences. I'm so sorry. So are on your mama hearts when they struggle. Another member commented. Another member said Amazon a fan tour. Another one said don't cave in, mom. Life skills will kick in unless she was never taught them. Good luck. Teach your skills to the kids early and your kids do need to learn how to accommodate and adjust to it. Are you a doorman, god? Our dorm rooms were prehistoric. There was no circulation, it was so hot, those crank windows, but you got used to it and you got used to dorm food and you lived life and had a great time doing it.
Speaker 2So some advice. These are my thoughts. They'll be a little bit random here and there, but if you've got a student at college or I'm going to talk about the ones, the juniors and seniors shortly First of all, number one start early. Don't be micromanaging your kids' grades. Maybe you check the grades once a week Not every day, with real-time updates when they're in high school. That's not going to help them. Maybe have a meeting on Sundays and you sit down on Sunday evenings and say, hey, let's review the grade book, let's see where you're at, if you have any missing assignments, that sort of thing. What's your plan? What's the student's plan for bringing that up to snuff? And don't immediately reach out with a credit card. So your kids, teenagers and the college kids are very spontaneous creatures and when they feel they need something, they immediately turn to their parents to get it.
Speaker 2Often, let's say, you've got a child who's a lacrosse player and he feels like his stick kind of sucks compared to the other teammates. Now his habit is going to be to text you and say Mom, coach says we need a new lacrosse stick, I need a new lacrosse stick and I have to get it right away and you might touch back. Are you sure they're expensive? We just got that one a year ago. What's he going to say? Oh yeah, coach, says I have to get it right away. And then you cave in and say, okay, here's the credit card number. They probably already have your credit card number or whatever. You charge it on Venmo it or whatever. Now, when they go to the lacrosse shop, what stick are they going to buy, sidney?
Speaker 2Oh, the most expensive, the most expensive one, and when you say really, are you sure you need that one, what are they going to say?
Speaker 3Absolutely.
Speaker 2Oh, that's the one we have to have, that's what everybody has, and it will just milk you dry. So you don't respond immediately. You have discussions and you say talk about that when you get home and maybe we can look online to see what the six options are. And maybe we can look online to see what the six options are, or maybe I'll call your coach if you need to and throw down the gauntlet in that regard. But starting early too.
Speaker 2Both of my books I talk about adventures with your kids. My son learned so much of his independence on our adventures. You have to problem solve. When you're out in the woods, when you're climbing, whenever, whatever you're doing, there's constant problems and you have to learn how to solve them. And no greater joy than when you see your kids solving problems themselves and you're not the one in charge solving it, they're doing it. In fact, my son's decision-making when we were in a slot canyon in Utah. And slot canyons are deep and you have no idea which way they they're going. You don't know North, south, east, west. They wind every direction and you go deeper and deeper and we arrived at this one area where two creeks merged and I thought for sure we needed to go to the right. So what? I? What I thought the direction was. And he's like, oh, to what I thought the direction was. And he said, oh, we need to go to the trail to the left. And I'm like, are you sure? He said, yeah, stop arguing. And I'm like, okay, and I went with it. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have been out of that slide canyon because the one to the right would have taken us deeper into the Escalante staircase National Monument. And he was right. And I was happy that he was right, because we wouldn't have made it, we would have run out of water. But just very proud of him.
Speaker 2And secondly, to talk to your kids early on about limits, especially with spending. How much money are you willing to spend for things at college? While they're there, they have their dorm food, they've got all the basic necessities they need. What's their budget that you're going to allow them to spend? And if you don't, what you're going to find is your child might not like, your student may not like the food at the dormitory. So what are they going to do if they have your credit card and unlimited spending? Grubhub, doordash, jimmy John's delivered Everything's going to be delivered, mcdonald's delivered, they're going to be paying twice the price for the stuff they could have walked to on their own. So start with saying here's the resources. This is what we're going to do. If you want to go beyond that, get a part-time job. I worked at a pizza for three years pizza for three years delivering pizzas for my extra money and I loved it. It was fun, had a great time and had extra spending money.
Speaker 2Third, this is the tough one. You have to accept as a parent, that your child is going to fail and they may not make it through that first year of college. There are students who don't make it and some students aren't ready for college yet. They're just not ready. You have to be able to accept that and realize that there's some situations that aren't going to work. They may figure it out later I will tell you.
Speaker 2I will show you a research study that my brother-in-law did years ago at Eckerd College he was the head of psychology there a research study that my brother-in-law did years ago at Eckerd College he was the head of psychology there and they looked at what was the common factor for students who didn't survive their freshman year and this was before technology and gaming and it was time alone in the dorm room. So the kids who were hibernating in their room, missing classes, not joining in with others, making friends, not reaching out to professors when they're struggling, they had the highest failure rate of dropping out because they just were isolated. So if you do find your students isolating, they're not connecting with others. They need to get some online, some support from the guidance center. All the schools have counseling centers. They need to reach out and get help If they're struggling academically. They all have student services for tutoring, organizational support. The colleges are over the top with that. In fact, denver University, right down the street from my office they were one of the first schools in the country to start a learning effectiveness program. It's been going on for ages. It was one of the first ones in the country and they're all offering that. So there are plenty of supports.
Speaker 2Now this year's seniors if you have a senior right now, this is a brutal time of year. They've got senior classes. They're involved in their arts, their sports Senior year. I just met with a soccer player. It's his senior year in soccer and they're getting those applications in. They've done their tests Over the summer and then last June they were taking the prep classes for the ACT or the SAT. They're taking the tests, sometimes two or three times. Now they're getting all the applications in. You're working with the college placement planner.
Speaker 2All of it is way over the top top and all of it's very stressful and I've seen several seniors in the last month that are just really falling apart. And these are high-performing students who have top grades. One of them who is just depressed. He's isolating because he said I'm just done with school, I'm just burnt out. I don't know if I want to go to college.
Speaker 2And I talked to him as mother about maybe you need a gap year, maybe you're ready for a gap year until you feel like you're ready to go to school, get back into studying. And also I talked about high school is a lot of hoops you have to jump through. At college you get to find your passion. Find your passion and then your work, all the hard work. You're seeing that go to your future when high school. It's hard for high schoolers to apply that to their future. It's just busy work and they don't see how that's going to help them. But it's helping those kids slow down and maybe they're not ready to go to school. Maybe they need a gap year, maybe they need to just slow down the process and start somewhere else, maybe start at a different school. If they don't get into their school of choice, that's just fine. There's many ways to get to where you're going to be.
Speaker 2Years ago I saw an article it was on successful people who didn't get into their first college choice, and on the list was Warren Buffett and Condoleezza Rice, who went to high school in St Mary's, just down the street from her office as well, and have had fabulous, successful careers and they didn't get into their first point, their first choice of schools. And it didn't matter. And it probably isn't. And you also want to be prepared that your kid is going to change directions. For my own son, he started out and this is a different age too. Now he's 30, now 31.
Speaker 2For the testing, he didn't do any prep test at all and we were at a Denver Nuggets game on a Friday night. It's about 9.30. We're watching the game and I turned to him and I said, hey, when's that ACT test? And he said, oh, it's tomorrow. I'm like what, shouldn't we be home? Don't you need to sleep? He said no, I'll be fine, and he was fine All through high school. I never checked his grades once I didn't have to.
Speaker 2He had all as I didn't micromanage him. It used to drive me nuts that he'd be studying in front of the TV and I'm like those aren't good study skills and he'd just look at me and say I have all as Now. I'd want to be very clear that every child's different. For my son, fortunately, he had a lot of internal self-control. There are students, and some of our kids, who have ADHD and they don't have a lot of internal control. So your parenting, you adjust to your child. So some kids, just let go of the reins, give them the freedom. Don't micromanage them. They're going to be fine and they'll do better. There are some kids that need more support. So they are going to need more parental involvement. But as they get to college, the support they need is at the college, through a tutor, through a counselor, through a caring professor, your advisor One of the joys. I do like smaller schools because you can have those intimate relationships with your advisors. That's one of the advantages. But their career path may change. My son for college choice.
Speaker 2We drove out to Yale. He looked at it and he was like this place sucks, I never want to live here. And he looked at DU and CU and he said I want to be away from home. And he started out as a law major and then he decided he wanted to do that, switched to finance Senior. He happened to do like an internship in an orthopedic center and he loved it, loved watching orthopedists work on cadavers. He was in charge of the cadavers and had really gotten to that and he finished with his finance degree and then he said I want to go to medical school and so he got his EMT, spent two years. He got his EMT and then spent two years driving an ambulance and learned a lot of hands-on problem solving, which fits him perfectly, then got into medical school and now is a surgeon and it fits all of his unique talents and I can say that the main thing I did as a father for him was support his interest. I think I mentioned on that last show that when he wanted to start welding we made a welding shop in our backyard. It's still there and he's very hands-on and artistic, he likes to make decisions and his career fit him perfectly. But it was a long path and it had many curves, and so were your kids.
Speaker 2Now, when your kids call, here's a couple tips. Don't immediately rescue them. Slow them down. Slow them down. Just listen and pause. Don't respond right away. Don't offer a solution right away. They're just feeling needy right then, and they're reaching out to you and then you just want to say that is a problem, isn't it? Or I guess you do have a problem Then, as you're standing there on the phone and they're on there, as you're taking a pause and slowing down, here's the question you ask yourself as a parent Is this something they can handle on their own?
Speaker 2Do they really need me to help them? Are they capable of figuring this out? And if they really do need it and your child needs extra, this exceptional needs, extra support fine. And if this is something you feel is over their heads, is exceptional needs, extra support, fine. And if this is something you feel is over their heads, fine. It's the same with your high schoolers. You don't want your kid getting in a car with a drunk driver, and if they call and they say, hey, my buddy's drunk, that's a time you might send over the Uber or Uber and pick them up. That is just fine.
Parenting Challenges and Transition to College
Speaker 2Safety is important, but most of the time, I think if you ask yourself is this something they're capable of? The answer is probably going to be yes. And finally, the strongest statement you can make to your child this is the most important is you simply say I have faith in you, that you'll get it figured out. That's empowering your child. Rescuing is not empowering them. You're just making them more dependent on you. And it's hard on you emotionally because you do want to rescue we all do but the best thing you can say is I have faith that you'll figure it out. So you empower them and help them move on and figure it out themselves, and they'll feel a lot more proud of themselves for handling it themselves than if you solve it for them. Sydney, any other thoughts on your end?
Speaker 3No, I think it's all advice and I think, from my perspective now, having almost four years into the process of college, I think the one thing that I think is important to mention is I wasn't prepared for the amount of sadness I would feel when my son left, where you have this person that is dependent on you and you're very involved in their life, and whether or not they're reaching out to you for help a lot or not. When they go off to college. There's a period of time where they don't contact you, especially if they get into it, and I felt really.
Speaker 3I felt really abandoned and it was really it was a tough thing, but I can say that it for most of my friends that have gone through it and myself, like they do start to come back and want to spend more time with you about sophomore year, but it is. There's that period of time where you're like, oh my God, like I have just given you so much child and not even a like, a thanks or anything because you do pour your and like the college prep process, the dorm, like getting the crap for the dorms and this and storage, like that is enough to put you over the edge.
Speaker 3But after and then they're, then they're just gone. So that. And then I think too, just the part about failure that you mentioned at some point your kid is going to fail that you mentioned at some point your kid is going to fail. And the way you mentioned your son being a high achiever, getting through school pretty easily that was my son too. But at some point your kids face some pretty heavy disappointments and it's heartbreaking as kid, as parents, to know that your kid is just so they've put so much into something and it's not going to work out. And you're like facing those realities that us as adults, older adults, have gone through many times at this point. But when your kids start going through that's hard.
Speaker 2You can't bubble wrap them from that it rips. And when you're talking about drop-off, I did two things when I dropped my son off. One is I gave my business card, my cell number, to his roommate and I said now I think you guys are going to do great, but if you ever get in a situation where you can't handle it, just call me. Now. If I had done that with my son, he rolled his eyes and said oh, dad, but I can remember driving back from boulder after I dropped him off and I was crying the whole way oh yeah, an ugly cry too.
Speaker 3It's not like a little tear, it's like a wailing it's very difficult, very deep in your heart.
Speaker 2Letting goting go is a very difficult process.
Speaker 3Scholarships and FAFSA and all of the things that you're doing. So like that, senior year is one of the most intense years you have with your kid, whether they go to college or not, and so you're just like so exhausted. And then that letdown, then there's nothing.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and as you're like ready for them to be out of the house, you're like, yeah, and as you're like, ready for them to be out of the house.
Speaker 3you're like, oh, this is. And two, it starts to make parents realize my kids are going to be out of the house, especially for moms. Talk about the amount of work that moms put into it, and so do dads. But there's this point where you say, oh wait, what am I going to do? What's for me? That's the whole empty nest syndrome.
Speaker 2We'll have to do another show on that.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2And when they fail. I had a vivid memory when you were talking about that Junior year. All along I wanted to be a pediatrician and then, between a chemistry class and cutting off the end of my thumb at a cheese grater, I realized I hate blood and fat and I'm squeamish when kids wiggle their teeth at me. That's not going to work. But I had a semester abroad and I still remember the park bench I sat on in Grindelwald, switzerland, looking at the Eiger, which is the famous mountain, contemplating what I was going to do, and I knew I wanted to work with kids. And that's where I came on the idea of maybe I'll be a therapist, I'll be a feeling doctor instead of a medical doctor or pediatrician, and that's where it came from.
Speaker 2But it was a lot of soul searching and I don't think my parents even realized it. I didn't really share that with them until I figured it out. And then when I told my dad what I wanted to do, he said what are the job prospects? And I said actually, dad, I took my family therapist professor up for lunch the other day and I saw his big house. And then we went out to lunch and he told me how much money he made as a family therapist and I told my dad. He said that sounds good, go to graduate school. I'm like, okay, that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 2My dad was all about can you get a job doing that, the device To figure it out. And again, if you have an exceptional student one of my students just is out on the East Coast now for college. He is neurodivergent is the term he has autism spectrum disorder absolutely gifted beyond belief and he needs extra support. So the parents did a lot of hard work this summer, got him set up and I reached out. They signed release forms for me to talk to the student services people about tutoring and helping with his ADHD. We got him set up with a psychiatrist out there, a therapist out there and doing lots of different things to support him because it's a huge transition for him and people at ASD struggle with flexibility and frustration tolerance. And his dad told me that for this first semester and I supported it they got an apartment not too far from the college out on the East Coast and they go out there. About every one of the parents goes out there every other week just to be there if he needs a little time with mom or dad and to relax and just calm down and get himself centered again. And he said to me I figured out the cost of an apartment was it would cost me a weekend hotel and we could have it for a whole month. I'm like good for you.
Speaker 2So some of your kids are going to need that support. I see a ton of kids individually that age group. We have social skills groups for young adults, for the kids who are struggling socially or they're isolated, and individual support for students who are feeling depressed or bogged down or that it's not working for them. There's tons of support at the school and also in the community. Wherever your son or daughter is, there's lots of support out there for them, and exceptional kids are going to need that. But it can't all come from you. You will pay the bill, that's for sure. Parenting just gets more will pay the bill, that's for sure. Parenting just gets more expensive, I can tell you that for sure. But they need the support. If they need it, get it for them and let them get the support and feel empowered to do so. Okay, I want to thank you so much for your input, sidney, that was great. I teared up when you were talking about that ugly cry. Please do make me cry. I had a great blessing. I turned 66 on October 1st a couple days ago, and the night before was our monthly program for mental health consumers, and I received so many blessings from our guests who are living in boarding homes or they live on the streets, and it was just so enriching to be with them the day before my birthday.
Speaker 2Also, this past weekend, my wife and I took our grandkids, who were almost five and nine, up to see the aspen trees the aspen here in Colorado Terns. They just shimmer in gold in the sunlight and we went up to one of my favorite places to see them, called Kenosha Pass. It's only a 45-minute drive, an hour away, but this was a new experience for them. They had never done that. So that always adds excitement for kids when they're doing something for the first time.
Speaker 2And we went for a hike. And then I made a little campfire with leaves and sticks and my grandson lit the first match and he was just in awe. He dropped it right away. He lit it. He was like he dropped it, like okay, let me show you how to do it. And we got the fire going. And then we roasted hot dogs on sticks and then we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores and I watched my grandson, who had a s'more that was like the size of his head, just chowing down and it was just pure joy. It was just. I absolutely felt this absolute joy and I also had a reflection from my wife and I are in second marriage.
Fall Family Adventures and Parenting Stress
Speaker 2She raised two, I raised one and then we raised one together at age—came to us at age seven. But being with the little ones and with my wife, I thought, wow, we're getting a chance to parent kids together Like we didn't get to when—as a second marriage. We didn't get that when our kids were younger. But it was just pure joy and pure beauty. So I hope all of you out there are having some fun fall adventures. It is a great time of year, great season. Maybe if you live in the Midwest or East, you're probably going apple picking and you're getting pumpkins and just great things this time of year. So I hope you're all enjoying fun family adventures in the fall. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please share it with a friend. We'll continue on our series of Parents Under Stress and remember until next time, just relax. You only have to be the side of good enough. Thank you.