970x125
‘Tis the season for joy and family togetherness, but for high school seniors, it is also the season to sweat over college applications. While the family is gorging on cookies during another viewing of Die Hard, the compromise Christmas movie, the teens are counting their extracurriculars and polishing their personal essays, aiming for that reach school on their list. And they receive a lot of help, typically, from their school counselors, older siblings, and you, their parents. But often neglected is an essential question: Are they emotionally and socially ready to leave home? As they make this life-changing decision, here are some questions to consider:
Emotional Regulation. Can your teen moderate their highs and lows? Can they bounce back from disappointment and heartache without going into a crisis? Can they recognize their need to reach out and talk to someone? How well are they able to regulate and control their emotions so that they don’t spin out of control? Certainly, babies and toddlers lack that capacity and look to their caregivers. As they grow, however, their brains develop that ability. Better emotional regulation is one of the hallmarks of emotional maturity. You can be sure that in the college years, there will be disappointment and heartbreak. Can they navigate that on their own?
Frustration Tolerance. An aspect of emotional regulation, this tolerance deserves some space on its own, because the ability to tolerate frustration has decreased over the past few decades in our culture, along with the rise of internet and cell phone use, especially among young people who have grown up in a culture that lacks attention span. Their “muscle” for being able to wait and tolerate frustration has not formed; they seldom have to use it. For example, studies have found that stalking and inappropriate social interactions have risen among college students. A student of mine emailed me 33 times within two hours because I had not responded. Like disappointment, frustration is bound to occur in life. Can your teen deal with it when it happens?
Managing Autonomy. Let’s face it, the biggest thrill of going away to college is autonomy—no parents to tell you to go to bed, to clean your room, to check on your deadlines. You are beholden to no one except yourself. That can be exciting and challenging at the same time, which is part of the thrill. But there is a real need to be able to manage this freedom. One area that has emerged recently, with many students arriving on campus with prescribed medications, is whether they can manage this on their own. With medications for depression and anxiety, this is critical. Missed doses can spell calamity. Can they stay on their regimen as they explore their autonomy? Besides medication, there are many adult concerns to manage: sexual health, intimate relationships, drug and alcohol use, and many of my students acknowledge that they felt ill-equipped to deal with these aspects of life when they started college.
Ability to Build and Sustain Friendships. Parents know that the life of a teenager revolves around their peers. At adolescence, they start to turn to their peers for advice, support, and recreational outlets. Away from home, the friendship network is their safety net to cope with challenges. They will need their old friends from high school with whom they maintain close relationships through their devices, as well as new ones with whom they spend their everyday life. Do they have the ability to build friendships? Being a social butterfly is not the goal; research has found that one close friend or just a few friends make a huge difference.
A Parent’s Ability to Let Go. The last consideration involves the parents, but it is critical to the teen’s readiness. The parent needs to recognize that this is the kid’s life now. This seems, at face value, obvious and perhaps laughable, but are the parents able to allow their child to be challenged, to flail, to fail, to be disappointed and heartbroken, in short, to experience all of what life has in store? I’m not being pessimistic; it’s the opposite. Part of the richness of life is all of those things alongside the joys and successes. If the parent is not ready to allow the child the breadth and depth of experience, no matter how difficult, the child will likely sense it, and it may seed doubt as well.
How to Get Ready? If you’ve gone down this list and find the answers less than satisfactory, there is still time to get ready. As with academics (and getting to Carnegie Hall), the key is practice, practice, practice. Allow your child the space to be autonomous, to self-regulate, to make and sustain friendships, to feel stressed and frustrated, all while you are still within arm’s reach. These are skills that can be developed in both you and your teen. And resist stepping in to soothe or help. The nine months before leaving home are a luxury and an opportunity.
If your teen’s well-being is best served by staying near, there is no shame in it. Community colleges offer a lot of bootstrapping services that help young adults become ready to leave home. There is no absolute timetable that says age 17 or 18 years is the right time to head to college. The right time is when they are academically, emotionally, and socially ready.
