The Launching Pad
The College Acceptance Letter Is In the Mail – Now What?
Any day now high school seniors will be hearing from the colleges of their choice. Yes or no, thin letter or fat missive, it’s a critical time for parents as well as their young adults, the first stage in launching them into the college transition. What can and should you expect?
Whether they got into their number one pick or their “safety” school is the only alternative – and even if where they go won’t be determined until waiting lists open up, colleges overlooked in the first round come in for a reappraisal, or the financial aid package comes through – they’re already in the transition. So why, even if they’ve achieved their goal and you’ve found a way to pay for it, are they suddenly being so, well, difficult? (Rude, thoughtless, provocative, uncooperative, moody – choose your own adjective).
It’s eerily like the beginning of their adolescence – remember how your delightful, engaging pre-teen turned into a monster? Regression to an earlier developmental stage is how they cope with the immediacy of the next one, which promises losses as well as anticipated gains. By distancing themselves from what they’ll be leaving – the safe, secure, loving world behind your front door, or even the slightly dysfunctional one they’ve been promising you they couldn’t wait to get out of – they’re steeling themselves against missing it too much. Maybe you’re getting the first few inkling of their expectable ambivalence now – if you’re like many families, it may not show up until closer to their estimate time of departure Which is both the good news and the bad – by then, you’ll be so glad to get rid of each other that letting go will be a relief on both sides, at least until you get used to it.
Which is another story, which I’ll be writing about frequently between now and the start of their first semester. Because launching them also means we’re launching ourselves into a new developmental stage with its own gains and losses – Postparenthood. As they move into their first adulthood, you’re beginning your second. And whether your fledgling is the first to leave the nest or the last, there’s one thing that’s certain – life will be different for all of you from now on.
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Welcome,
A skilled coach and life boundaries consultant whose expertise, advice and assistance can improve your relationships with your grown children, parents and other family members, friends and colleagues and help you balance your needs with those of others and your personal and professional obligations and commitments… Jane Adams has spent over two decades researching and reporting on how Americans live, work, and love, and especially how they respond to social change. A frequent media commentator, she has appeared on every major radio and television program. The author of eight nonfiction books and three novels, she is a talented communicator, and an expert in managing personal, professional and family boundaries, dealing with grown children, coping with change, and balancing life and work. A graduate of Smith College, Jane Adams holds a Ph.D. in social psychology and has studied at Seattle Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Washington, D.C. Psychoanalytic Foundation. She has been an award-winning journalist, a founding editor of the Seattle Weekly, and an adjunct professor at the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the Family Advocate of the Year award from “Changes,” an organization devoted to improving relationships between parents and adolescent children. |
I help kids write their college application essays, and I often turn to Jane Adams for advice about how to smooth the troubles waters between kids nervous about leaving the nest and their equally anxious parents. Jane always has something really smart and useful to say.
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