Letting Go: College Summer Break

My son pointed out that almost all the texts I sent him the first week he was home from school were questions about his plans.

Uh, oh I became THAT mom without even meaning to! 

For some context, my oldest son is home after his sophomore year of college at University of Maryland.  I LOVE having him home, but it is an adjustment for all of us.

There is some sort of strange phenomenon that happens the longer your child is away at school; somehow you stop worrying about them all the time.  I’m not saying I don’t worry, of course I do.  I’m not saying I don’t think about him every day, of course I do.  But something happens where you stop worrying about where they are every night, and you start to trust that they are making good decisions. 

Truly a step in the letting go process.

But all of these forward steps come to a screeching halt when your child is back under your roof. 

Suddenly I want to know where he is all the time and what time he will be home.  That first week I was likely driving him crazy, so I had to consciously put on the brakes. 

I remember my mom telling me many years ago about the adjustment she had when I came home from school.  There had to be rules because it was her home, but she didn’t want me not to want to come home because those rules were too strict.  Away went the curfew.  Since we didn’t have cell phones and texting it was easier to step back from your kids then, because you already were forced to with the once-a-week phone calls from the dorm phone.  But she still wanted to know where I was to a point.

Those summers home from college were filled with friends and boyfriends and jobs and just running around.  Remembering them makes me smile and it’s difficult to believe they were over 30 years ago!  I worked multiple jobs and was out a lot.  Even running into NYC with friends – I would be horrified if my kids did that. This was the 90’s so very different parenting styles.

With all the available technology, we have become so used to knowing what our kids are doing all the time when they are younger that it gets even harder when they are older to let go of that, sometimes from both sides.  With cell phones and Life 360 you can literally track your kids every move if you wanted to. Although I hear of some pretty clever ways these tech-savvy kids have come up with to stimy those attempts – kids are so smart!

We settled into a sort of routine where I kept her apprised of my plans and she tried her best not to give me a hard time.  It worked for us.  And I always wanted to go home for breaks from school. 

 I’m sure all parents of college aged children are going through this same process right now.  It’s a weighing of parental concern and control and allowing your child to grow up.  Not an easy balancing act for either side.

So here I am with a 20-year-old young man who has spent most of the past year living in an apartment with friends and navigating a large state school.  He’s done an amazing job and I’m so proud of how he has assimilated.  But now he’s back under my roof (and his dad’s part of the time) and it’s tough to see him as a young adult who just a few weeks ago was miles away.  He’s still my baby.

My husband is very schedule oriented, and the first few weeks of summer made him feel very disoriented with a lack of schedule.  With my older one home and younger one out of school and working, we didn’t know who was coming and going or who we were making dinner for that night.  We realized quickly we needed a better plan.

So, after a few initial bumps, we sat down and talked about how we can make this process easier for all of us.  I asked both my boys to please write their weekly schedules on the day planner that is kept in our kitchen.  They of course said they would text me and maybe start a joint family calendar that we can share on our phones, but I pictured that aging my husband quickly.  So, we’re back to old school paper in my house!

My hope is that this will keep us all up to date on the comings and goings of everyone and also allow more independence for both of my boys. 

I can’t promise it will reduce my anxiety or my need to know where they are all the time, but it’s a solid start.