The Senior Summer

The Senior Summer

The summer between your child’s senior year of high school and freshman year of college is a carnival ride; exhilarating, scary, and nauseating. You swing wildly between sadness over “losing” your child to college on one day, and then the next day wishing he would just get out of the house! The next few months with test your patience and sense of humor, but throughout these 10 to 12 weeks rest assured that millions of other families have gone through the same rites of passage and have come out relatively unscathed.

“But, he’s driving me absolutely crazy!”

Believe it or not, that’s a very good sign.  In fact, if your college bound-child is not making you crazy and pushing every button you have, I would be concerned because that’s what supposed to happen. If our “near adult” children didn’t drive us to push them out of the house they’d never leave; never strike out on their own, get an education, a job, find a spouse and then we’d never have a shot at grandkids. And, according to all reports, grandkids are awesome!

Putting up with your child’s current mood swings and know-it-all attitude is demanding, and it will take all your will to not alienate him in the final weeks before he leaves, but please be patient with him and yourself and know that this behavior is not only normal, it’s essential for his personal development. You may have to bite your tongue more than you let it fly, but you’re the adult with all the life experience, you’ll manage.

You may assume that since approximately two million freshmen enroll in college each fall that this whole transition would be easy, it’s not. Just like getting married, moving to a new town, buying a home or having a baby, this is a major life change not just for your child, but also for everyone in the family. Yes, younger siblings will have bizarre mood swings right along with you and your college bound child. Even the family dog will wonder why everyone is so tense and may wander in confused circles for a least a while.

While you could easily succumb to the malaise that an impending bittersweet departures always bring about, I suggest that you take some time to plan a course of action that will help you and your child over the next few months and well into the academic year. This summer is a good time to catch up on some basic survival skills with your child, and make sure that if your daughter has never changed a tire, she learns how, and if your son still hasn’t grasped the basics of wash, dry, and fold, he also learns that skill.  A lot of people ask me why its so important that college students learn such basic skills like these, after all, in any given college town there are roadside assistance services and laundry services widely available for a small fee.

While I agree that is true, learning these skills isn’t really about changing tires and doing laundry. Although it will save thousands of dollars in the long run, it’s impossible to put a dollar figure on self-reliance. If young people don’t learn that they really can do these things for themselves, they will simply assume that they can’t and will always be at the mercy of those who can. Once students start taking care of small tasks for themselves, they soon learn that there are a lot of things worth trying just to be able to say. “Yes, I can do that!”