outofplace
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2005
- Messages
- 62,196
Trust her. And listen to her.
Sent our youngest child and only daughter off to college in the fall of 2020 (the heat of Covid). She was a little reserved around people she didn't know, didn't have a roommate, and only one psycho suitemate, and none of her group of high school friends went with her to this state college, about 3 hours from home. Looking back, I can't believe we didn't freak out more than we did about it. It was all masks, all the time, half of her clashes were online, and in the dorms, it was prohibited to leave your door open and go room to room, getting to know your fellow students, as it seems is the norm at any school in any non-Covid year.
We moved her in and walked around campus with her, so she'd know where to go get books, where the nearest cafeterias were, where her clashes were, etc., and finally, after being on campus for a few hours, she looked at us and said, "You guys can go now. This is where I need to be."
The tears with Mom and I on the way home were unreal. We felt like we were the worst parents in the history of the world for sending her off to school.
She graduated with honors in May, with a strong group of new friends, and with a job she's pashionate about in her field of study. A semi-serious boyfriend, and she's thriving.
Make no mistake, Dog. She's going to go through rough patches, she's going to get her heart broken, and she's going to wonder if she belongs. But she does belong, and she will get through it, and she will thrive. Just be there to listen, make sure she knows you're a quick drive away and will do whatever she needs to make sure she has everything she needs, and trust her to find her way.
Good luck,
This is great. There is so much wonderful advice on this thread. My daughter will be a senior this fall, so she started a year later. She jumped right in socially. We were going to stay at a hotel near campus so we could have dinner with her that night, then drive back in the morning. She found some dorm activity and said it was fine if we wanted to head home instead. My wife was already crying, but that sent her into full-on bawling. It was a rough drive home.
You nailed it with the part about trusting her and listening to her. That means living with some mistakes, but that's college life. My daughter was a little too social and the joke that was her senior year in high school led to some academic issues freshman year, but she recovered and is set to graduate on time. The funny thing is we end up worrying more often when she's home because we know a bit of what's going on. When she's at school, if she does do something that might have made us nervous, we usually don't know about it until after the fact.