11 minute read
LEAVING THE NEST
There’s no question that the transition from family life to college life can be challenging. It’s reassuring to know that we’re equipped to help, and that you have an important role to play in supporting your student’s successful transition as well.
YOUR ROLE IN SUPPORTING YOUR STUDENT’S SUCCESS
The college search has ended. The dorm room necessities have been packed and unpacked. The goodbyes have been said (a few times). You are officially the parent of a college student. Now what?
College is a significant time in the life of your student, filled with opportunities and excitement. The transition of becoming a college student is an important developmental step toward adulthood and you play a significant role in helping your student transition well to college. You will experience an array of emotions during this time of change. This is a natural response for you as a parent, your student, and for the rest of your family.
Like most new things, your student will face challenges that come with transition. Responsibilities and problems will arise, which students will have to learn to negotiate on their own. This transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood is called “individuation,” becoming a person in one’s own right. During this stage, your student will strive to become more able to support himself or herself emotionally, physically, and socially. This is done through experiencing challenges and responding to them. When we do this, particular skills sets are grown, such as communication skills, decision-making skills, and problem-solving skills. We are not born with these skills sets; they are developed through the modeling of others and personal experiences. The next four years of college play a very important role in developing these skills and preparing for life as an adult. This can be a time of uncertainty, questioning, and vulnerability. This is normal and essential for the transition into adulthood.
Remember that you will be making some adjustments, too. Your job as a parent is not over; it is just evolving. You are entering the Launching Phase of parenting. As your student enters into adulthood, it is important to begin taking on the roles of coach and adviser. Remember, even the most positive life changes can bring about some anxiety.
HOW TO APPROACH THE TRANSITION INTO COLLEGE:
Find Balance
Negotiate what communication and involvement will look like in this stage of life. It is important to stay connected, but not too connected. Decide together how often you will speak on the phone, visit each other, or send e-mails. Come to an agreement on how much and what information is to be shared regarding college life experiences. It is important that you be available to talk to your student about his or her college experience but also not be the only outlet for support and stress management.
Expect Growing Pains
Adjusting to roommates, feeling homesick, getting to know people, handling daily living responsibilities, all while managing the academic demands of college, will feel overwhelming at some point. This adjustment period will be temporary, and will grow life skills in the process.
Allow Space
It is important as your student enters into adulthood to encourage an appropriate level of responsibility and independence. Let the student use his or her own judgment to decide what is best and trust him or her to make good decisions. Help problem-solve by asking questions to guide decisions, instead of intervening or attempting to fix the problem yourself.
Encourage Resourcefulness
Expect a time to come when your student will have a need that he or she cannot meet on his or her own. Encourage your student to find support. Benedictine College offers many academic, residential, health, and social services. In helping your student transition to college, teach him or her to know when to get help and how to find it.
Instill Resilience
Resilience is the capacity to recover from a difficult situation. To be resilient is to know how to cope in spite of setbacks and discover how to overcome obstacles. This takes emotional intelligence and is a learned skill that is extremely important to grow for adulthood. In helping your student transition to college, you have the opportunity to teach him or her about resilience. Every time he or she faces and overcomes an obstacle, from a roommate conflict to a lost student ID or a failing grade on a paper, your student is becoming more resilient.
Be Realistic
There is a period of transition for many students who excelled academically in high school, in which they may struggle in their college courses. As they work to strengthen time management skills, study skills and organizational skills, their academic achievement will usually improve. During this time, it can help to ask your student to discuss class projects and papers instead of focusing on grades.
Stay Calm
It is normal, particularly in the first semester of college, for students to make an emotional phone call (or a few) to family during difficult times. While this may be challenging or heartbreaking to experience, it is also a sign of the strong relationship of trust that you have built. Try not to be overly reactive. When you model calm reactions, it shows that the situation can be resolved and that it will not ruin your student’s college experience.
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WAYS TO HELP YOUR STUDENT ADJUST TO COLLEGE LIFE
1. Recognize that moving away to college is a stressful
activity that requires many adjustments during the first year.
2. Encourage your son or daughter to take initiative with his or her college experience and utilize the existing help services on campus as needed:
• Academics: Academic and Disability Services (Katie Campbell), Student Success Center (Janet Wilcox), academic advisor, or campus tutors • Spiritual: Campus Ministry (Megan Ryan) • Residential: Resident Assistants, Residence Hall Directors, Student Life personnel (Dr. Linda Henry, Dr. Joe Wurtz, Dr. Sean Mulcahy) • Personal: Student Health Services (Janet Adrian, RN), Counseling Center (Grace Mulcahy, LSCSW)
3. Expect your son or daughter
to change. This is a normal and necessary developmental step for transition into adulthood.
4. Roommate tension is
normal. Sharing a room, sharing a bathroom, making rules for common spaces, and living in a residence hall can be difficult adjustments. We encourage you to have a conversation with your student prior to their arrival about these topics. It will be helpful for them to know these experiences are a normal part of the transition to college.
5. Many students go through at least one bout of
homesickness. It is normal to miss the familiarity of home and the strong friendships left behind.
If your student calls you and wants to come home, set a wait period for at least the first semester before revisiting the idea of leaving. It’s amazing how much can change in a three-month period of time.
6. Anticipate Disillusionment.
As the adjustment process is unfolding, most first-year students experience tension academically and socially. Initial friendships often shift to other groups. Some may experience loneliness as they work to find their niche in the community. It can also feel overwhelming to take care of daily personal responsibilities without parental direction or support, such as waking up for class, doing laundry, and caring for one’s own health. Recognize and support the growing pains that come with achieving independence.
7. Encourage responsibility.
Growing in responsibility takes trial and error. Take on the role of coach and advisor. Instead of providing immediate solutions to a problem, have your son or daughter work through problem themselves, then encourage them to move forward with one of their solutions.
8. Expect stress to exacerbate physical and mental health
conditions. In times of transition, stress levels will rise. Many students with a previously diagnosed mental or physical health condition may experience an increase in their symptoms. This is normal and temporary. The Student Health
Center is available as needed to help with this adjustment. If incoming students have taken medications for anxiety, depression, or attention deficit problems prior to entering college, their first semester at college is not the time to begin altering dosage levels or discontinuing such medications.
If there is a desire to discontinue or decrease the medications, please wait until at least second semester.
9. Your son or daughter will fail
at something; that is OK. It will take time to grow the study skills, time management skills, and organizational skills your student will need to be successful in college. It also takes time to learn how to balance the college workload with a social life.
Understanding the pace of academics while managing the challenges that come with more freedom can create difficulties. Give your student the freedom to experience failure and encourage the practice of taking on challenges, even if there is the potential to fail. Learning how to cope with adversity stimulates growth and builds character.
10. Two Homes. By Christmas, students who have settled in well will often use the word “home” when they mean returning to campus. Allow them to have “two homes.”
11. Support. Be available to listen. Ask questions around their thoughts and feelings of the college experience.
Remind them of their goals, values, and gifts. Let them know that you have confidence in their abilities.
12. Remember that you will be making some adjustments, too.
Your job as a parent is not over, it is just changing. You are now taking on the new roles of coach and advisor, and although you may think that you’ll enjoy the peace and quiet with them away at school, you just may discover that you miss them. It can help to seek out resources and information on the first-year experience and share your feelings with other parents in the same stage of life.
13. Ask for Help. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to call Student
Life 913.360.7500, the Counseling
Center 913.360.7621, or Student
Health Services 913.360.7117.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR PARENTS
. . And So We Pray: Guidance for Moms With College-Aged Young Adults
by Maribeth Harper
Don't Tell Me What to Do, Just Send Money: The Essential Parenting Guide to the College Years
by Helen E. Johnson, et al.
Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years
by Karen Levin Coburn, Madge Lawrence Treeger
When Your Kid Goes to College; A Parent's Survival Guide
by Carol Barkin
Almost Grown: Launching Your Child from High School to College
by Patricia Pasick
Empty Nest, Full Heart: The Journey from Home to College
by Andrea Van Steenhouse, Johanna Parker
Doors Open From Both
Sides by Steffany Bane, Margo E. Bane Woodacre
The Launching Years: Strategies for Parenting from Senior to College Life
by Laura Kastner, Jennifer Fugett Wyatt
THE COUNSELING CENTER
1201 N. Second St. / 913.360.7621 / Monday - Friday: 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
The Counseling Center supports students in their psychological, personal, and social well-being, and is staffed by licensed mental health professionals. Services are free to students and are strictly confidential. Personal counseling through the Counseling Center is intended generally to assist students and staff in solving concerns of a short-term nature. Referrals to other community practitioners may be made for intensive and/or long-term psychological assistance.
Complete a Counseling Request Form Benedictine.edu/student-life/health/counseling-center
TRANSITION SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE COUNSELING CENTER
Individual Counseling Licensed mental health professionals are trained in the social, emotional, and mental challenges that can occur during the transition to college and are available as a support resource.
Student Drop-In Support Group This group is offered weekly by one of our counseling staff and offers helpful tools and reources for transition support. Students are also given the opportunity to share with and support other incoming students through this time of newness and change.
Peer Mentoring This program is available for those students who desire more ongoing support from a peer who has “been there.” This mentoring program provides a weekly opportunity for students to meet with an upperclassman to engage in discussion, ask questions, get advice, and learn about campus resources to help with the challenges of college life.
“What to Expect in the First Year” Fall Transition Program
The Counseling Center, together with Residence Life, provides a fall semester program on the transition to college. Students receive tools, resources, and information, as well as hear testimonies of transition experiences from fellow Benedictine students.
