NOT MORE COLLEGE MOVE-IN ADVICE
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 114.
Hello, my friends. Well, somehow another summer has flown by, and for those of us with college kids, there are only a few weeks, maybe even only a few days before we ship them off to college. This time last year, I was preparing to send my oldest off to school for the first time, and I remember being so excited for him, but dreading that day when I'd have to say goodbye.
This year, at least, I know better what to expect. Actually, so does he, so I worry a bit less about how both of us will adjust. I know what to expect.
At the same time, I'm preparing to launch into my youngest son's senior year, and I'm cognizant of the fact that this time next year, I'll be preparing to say goodbye again, officially entering the empty nest. There are so many, many goodbyes along this road, with each milestone reached, each last. Last first day of school, last picture, last time signing up for high school classes.
When you go on social media, you find so many posts or articles with advice about how to manage these transitions. The advice is all very well-meaning, and I assume given by women who have gotten to the other side of what might have been a stressful journey for them as well. They feel they have some advice to share to try to make the road a little easier for the women who come after them.
I've actually also seen a few colleges post these articles with advice, undoubtedly to try to get parents to be a little less nervous about the transition. And if they were really being honest, they would want to say, Dear parent, let us take it from here. Your job is done.
So these pieces of advice fall into two categories, either let go or find a way to move on. Now, in my practice with women I work with, moms of teens, almost empty nesters, already empty nesters, I always make it clear that my role as a coach is not to give them advice. In fact, I generally don't think it's helpful when people tell you what to do anyway.
I mean, it sounds like it would be nice, right? There are some cases where someone telling you how to do something is helpful. Like if you get a new piece equipment or something that requires assembly. It's actually really helpful if someone shows you how to do it or assemble it.
So you don't have to figure it out on your own. In these cases, people telling you how to do something saves you time and aggravation. But there's another category of lessons that are simple in theory, but not easy in practice.
I think this is the category that much of the advice I see online falls into. Simple, logical advice, things people suggest that you should do, and yet actually doing these things for some of us isn't easy. So it's interesting to consider maybe it's not advice you need.
Consider that you might be better served exploring your mindset around these questions, getting clear on what you really want to accomplish, the pros and cons of your current approach, and what specifically is holding you back from choosing what you really want to do. So I thought it would be interesting to do a mindset audit of some of the common advice I've seen for moms approaching the empty nest and see how I might reframe this guidance in the context of mindset, essentially empowering you to step into what you really want, rather than frankly feeling worse because some well-meaning advice giver is suggesting that you do something that feels really hard to do. So here are five common pieces of advice for empty nesters and how I would reframe this advice from a mindset perspective.
The first is be supportive, not overbearing. Okay, so I'm already triggered by this advice. I don't know about you, but for me, it's along the same lines as when your teen tells you that you're being controlling.
I mean, there's not one of us who wakes up in the morning saying, I can't wait to control my teen today, or my goal is to be as overbearing as possible. The advice to be supportive, not overbearing, feels condescending, actually. I'm sure whoever offered this flavor advice is very well-meaning.
But when you think about it, all we've ever wanted to be is supportive in the best way. So it can feel heartbreaking to be told what you're really being is controlling or overbearing. So let's try to look at the facts here.
What does overbearing even mean? Webster says it means to overwhelm, to be dominant. In the context of our teens, it probably refers to times when we try to get them to see our point of view or even try to get them to think or act in a certain way. But the thing is, when we're doing this as moms, we're almost always doing it, offering our advice or guidance, because we believe with all our heart that it's the right thing to do.
To us, it feels supportive. And actually, the other really interesting thing is that sometimes our kids think we're controlling, and we think and know what we're actually doing is protecting them. I literally just had a conversation with my son, who's 17, and he's subject to a state-mandated 11 p.m. curfew when he's driving.
Well, he is consistently coming home well after 11. We've reminded him again and again. And at this point, I just said to him, I have to enforce consequences.
Now, he can think I'm controlling. He actually gets to have whatever opinion he wants to about me. But I know that I'd rather threaten to take his driving privileges away for 24 hours than have a police officer take his license away.
For now, these boundaries I'm setting are important, and he gets to think I'm controlling. I'm okay with it. So at what point is it okay to be a little overbearing or controlling? This is the problem with advice.
It doesn't apply to every situation or every kid all the time. And maybe more importantly, what's supportive versus what's overbearing is all in the eye of the beholder. My college kid and I are very likely to disagree about that every once in a while.
All that said, what is this advice really trying to convey? It suggests that there's an ideal balance in the support we offer our kids. So if we take it as a given that this level of support may be different for each of our kids, and that it's possible that we and our kids could disagree on whether our support is actually supportive or overbearing, then what I want to offer is that you take responsibility for making a decision about what level of support is right for your child, and then have your back about it. But I'll add this.
It's helpful to make your decision about the right level of support based on what your child needs and not about what you need. Now you might be thinking, I'm always responding to what my child needs or what's best for them. And I'm not saying that you don't or that you're doing anything wrong.
My job here isn't to judge you, nor is it to tell you how you should be parenting your child. This is 100% up to you. But I want to suggest that you think about a recent time when something your kid has done or said made you feel anxious.
What was happening in your brain at that moment was that you heard the or observed the behavior and you had a thought like, nope, that's not right. That's wrong. That's dangerous.
I've got to steer this ship in a different direction. And it's highly possible that you were right about that. But stick with me.
In that moment, you're feeling anxious. And so often what we do is we react to our anxiety. We might respond quickly, not wait to hear the whole story, not stop to ask more questions or find out if our teen is navigating the situation better or more responsibly than we think they are.
When you react quickly to your anxiety, your brain is actually trying to fix the situation so that you can drop your anxiety. Here's an example. Last year, my son going into college was late signing up for everything.
Late to sign up for a move-in date. Late to figure out how to sign up for classes. He realized 24 hours before the class sign up deadline that he was supposed to have scheduled an appointment with his advisor so she could approve his classes and open up the portal for him.
So he literally couldn't even sign up for classes without having this advisor meeting. I kid you not at this point, it was Friday at 5 p.m. All sorts of thoughts went through my head. He won't get into the classes he wants.
His first semester is going to be wasted. This is just an example of how many opportunities he's going to miss because he's not on top of deadlines. My mind offered all of these thoughts and more.
I wanted to take charge. I wanted to figure out how to fix the situation. I wanted to give him a lecture about responsibility.
I had an urge to step in and make the situation better. Of course, because I wanted my son to have a successful first semester. But also, if I'm really honest with myself, because I didn't want to have to feel anxious anymore.
The truth is, I can't ever feel my boy's anxiety or failure if they feel it. I can only feel my anxiety and failure. So when I do, I instinctually want to fix it.
It's a natural, automatic human response to want to feel better. This doesn't make us bad or wrong. I posted something about this online and someone asked a great question.
She said, it doesn't feel genuine to just stay silent and do nothing in these situations. And I get it. She's right.
But hear me when I say, I don't think you have to do nothing or stay silent. But here's the opportunity. When you feel anxious about something going on with your college kid, stop to check in with yourself before reacting or responding.
Think about what you're feeling and be sure that you're not just reacting to make your feelings go away. Be honest with yourself about what your teen really needs. In my son's case, what he really needed was to learn the lesson for himself that there is a process that he had to follow and that there might be consequences if he didn't.
This is a life lesson, not just a freshman year lesson. Fortunately, also, this amazing advisor made herself available to my son over the weekend and he signed up for his classes with hours to spare. What I learned is this isn't the college's first time at the rodeo and they know that kids are going to miss deadlines in the beginning.
It's also their job to help our kids learn these lessons. In the process, what I learned is that one, my son was capable of figuring things out, even if it wasn't on my timeline. And two, I also learned that the college had his back as he went through this learning process.
So back to the first piece of advice, and I promise these other lessons are going to go faster, but the first piece of advice was be supportive and not overbearing. What I would change this to is be sure your support is 100% for them and not about you. And I'll add one more thing.
You don't have to give your support in all cases. For example, if your kid asks for more money and you think they've been spending irresponsibly, you don't have to give them the money. You get to set boundaries around your support.
But when you do decide to support your team, take some time to evaluate if that support is about them or a way for you to feel less anxious or frustrated in this moment. So now on to the second common piece of advice, stay in touch, but not too much. So this recommendation suggests that we set a regular but not excessive communication schedule with our college kids.
I actually disagree with this advice. I think you should text and call your kid as much as you want to. Seriously.
Again, each of our kids are different. Some of our kids will want us to call and text and others won't. In a perfect world, you might be able to mutually agree on a communication schedule that works for both of you.
Standing calls on Sunday evenings, for example. I tried this and my son basically said he wasn't sure he could commit to a schedule. Now I could have interpreted this as him blowing us off.
But if I didn't make it about me, I could also see that my son was fully immersing himself in college. His actions were 100% about him and I was willing to not make them about me. I know this is a hard one because we love our kids and we miss them.
And so of course we want to connect with them and feel like they want to connect back. I'll admit that when I would text my son and he wouldn't respond, I would feel a little disappointed. But the truth is I know he loves me and that he misses me and was also doing so well in college that he lost track of his texts.
It's going to be his work in life to manage his communications. But as he's been home for the summer, he admitted that he often misses texts for everyone, not just me. So if you can establish a regular communication schedule with your kids, awesome.
But if you can't, here's what I'll say. Text and call as much as you want to, as much as you think is appropriate. Send them messages telling them you love them and miss them.
Text them to say just have a good day. But let them communicate back as often or as little as they need to. Know in your heart that they love you.
Don't make them prove it to you. You get to feel disappointed if you don't talk to them as much as you'd like. But be careful not to make your child responsible to make you feel better, my friend.
Here's the third common flavor of advice often given to almost-emptiness moms. Stay positive. Now this advice is grating to me.
It's like when you complain about something and someone tells you, look on the bright side. I hate to break it to you, but your brain will automatically go to the negative. Our brains are constantly looking for danger and risk, and they'll find it, especially in circumstances that are new and in a situation like this when your child goes to college, where you still feel responsible to support them, obviously love them and want them to be happy and successful.
So it's hard to just think everything's great when your mind is telling you that that might not be true. In the past two examples where I've reframed typical college move-in advice, I've highlighted times when you might feel terrible about something. Like, you might feel disappointed if you don't get to talk to your teen as often as you'd like.
You might feel anxious when you see your kid struggling or not getting things done. The truth is, you might feel some painful emotions. And even if your teen asks for your help, you might not be able to fix what's going on with them.
If they're lonely at school or struggling to make new friends, you can't just snap your fingers and make that go away. So the truth is that you may feel a bit of pain. And so instead of telling you to stay positive, I want to tell you you're stronger than you think you are.
You've been holding space for your child's hurts and struggles for 18 or more years. The times you hugged them when they scraped their knees after a fall. The times they told you someone at school had been mean to them.
The disappointments at not being chosen. The bad test grades. The stress of getting into college.
You have held space for your pain and your child's pain for a long time. Where we make it worse is that on top of our sadness or discomfort or worry when we see our kids struggle, we add on this panicked feeling that we need to fix it or do something. We catastrophize or assume our kids won't be able to handle the situation without our involvement.
But consider there might be nothing for you to do here. In life, we are all going to struggle at times. Your kid struggling is a part of life.
If they need you, trust that they will tell you. Sometimes all they really need is to trust that you are there if they need you. But in the meantime, they keep working to figure things out on their own.
You don't have to stay positive, but believe in the possibility that both you and your child are stronger than you think. Consider for a moment right now how that might be true. The fourth common piece of advice is that women entering the empty nest should find a new hobby or purpose.
So this advice goes something like establish a new routine, find a hobby to fill your time, stay active, reconnect with friends, rediscover personal interests, volunteer or get involved in the community. By all means, do these things if you think they'll make you happy. But in truth, none of these things will make you happy unless you believe and decide that they will.
I actually remember in my 20s living in New York City and my best friend moved to DC for a few years. She had literally been the peanut butter to my jelly. We spent every moment together when we weren't working.
And so there I was completely untethered. I felt a gut-wrenching sense of loneliness. Here I was in a city with 8 million people and I felt utterly alone.
I kept myself busy during the week with work, but on the weekends I dreaded coming home to my lonely, empty apartment. I had other friends, but no one who made me feel as safe and happy as my bestie. I'd go out to brunch with people and then they'd be off to live their lives.
And I'd go back to my apartment alone. At that time, she left a void that I didn't know how to fill. Some of us moms feel exactly this way about our kids leaving, so I know firsthand how painful it can feel.
There are other moms who have the mindset that they love their kids but they're happy to get their freedom back. There isn't one right way to feel or act, only what's true for you. So if you feel a deep sadness as your child goes to college, don't beat yourself up because you don't relish the prospect of picking up pickleball.
But here's what I'll say. When it comes to your emotional experience, what most of us have never learned is that your mindset creates it. There are facts about our lives, and then our mind creates a perspective about those circumstances.
And it's these thoughts and beliefs that create our emotional experience. So one fact that we almost-empty-nest or already-empty-nest moms are facing is that our kid is going to college. Many of us are going to feel sad about that.
Many of us are going to think it's going to be sad without them at home. I'll miss seeing them on a daily basis. But there are also some of us, by the way, that might be thinking, see ya, love ya, but I'm ready for you to go.
But for those of us who are thinking about how much we'll miss our kids, of course we're going to feel sad when they go. It makes perfect sense. Our emotional experience is all based on our perspective and view of the circumstance in front of us.
But as I've been talking about with these other examples, there can be many layers to our emotions. There's the sadness that comes from thinking you'll miss your child. But then there's a feeling of dread that can come with thinking something like, I may never feel as fulfilled as I have when I've had kids at home.
Or I'm going to go home to an empty house and this feeling of sadness will never go away. Some of us might even feel lost or uncertain if we're thinking, I don't know what to do with myself now. Or we might feel regret if we think we should have had a career or a hobby so now we'd have something to do with ourselves.
Notice how many additional layers of negative emotion it's possible to have on top of just feeling sad about your child leaving home. On an even deeper level, some of my clients have come to find layers of discontent with other areas of their life, maybe with their families or partners. It's like now that we don't have the kids to distract us, we're left with the rest of our life and we don't really like what we see.
We could also have doubts about our ability or motivation to create something new. Whatever your experience, whatever your feeling, I want to tell you that it makes perfect sense. There are a series of thoughts in your mind that are creating your emotions.
That's all. Nothing has gone wrong. What I do with my clients in my coaching program is I help you untangle all of those thoughts so that you can better understand the layers of emotion you're experiencing and then tackle them one by one.
Imagine overcoming the feelings of dread, loss, uncertainty, anxiety, unworthiness, and resentment. Those feelings actually can't be solved by pickleball, which is why the advice to just get a hobby doesn't work for all of us. Instead of filling your time, my recommendation is to understand your mind, to understand the layers of emotion you're feeling, and actually learn how to create intentionally a more positive, powerful emotional experience of your life.
You have this power already within you, but no one has shown you how to use it. This is the work that I do in my Mom 2.0 coaching program. So the last piece of college move-in advice that I'd like to reframe is number five.
Be patient with yourself. This advice goes something along the lines of, you should understand that adjusting to the emptiness takes time. I'd like to reframe this advice this way.
Be compassionate with yourself. One definition of patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate suffering. Well, that sounds terrible to me.
Who wants to accept suffering? It implies a passive, almost giving in to something terrible, right? I say no thanks to that. Instead, I say practice compassion for yourself. This means developing an understanding of ourselves on a deeper level, validating your emotional pain, but also understanding the cause of it.
You are looking at your life through a pair of glasses tinted with your own individual perspective. That perspective isn't right or wrong. It's just what's true for you right now.
Imagine the power of understanding that perspective so deeply that you're able to choose on purpose what feelings you want to feel, choose what feelings you want to lean into, and which feelings you might need to allow. For example, I personally need to allow sadness that my baby is going into his senior year and I only have one more year left with him at home. I don't need to convince myself to feel differently about that.
I get to feel sad. But I also lean into the thought that I'll be okay and I get to create something incredible with the second half of my life. I didn't come to these thoughts easily.
I've had to spend time understanding many layers of resentment, insecurity, disappointment, frustration, and anxiety. I've unraveled the threads of these emotions, which used to be in a big ball in my mind and are now all very clear to me. And in the process, I've been able to let them go.
Every single one of us has a story in our mind about who we are, whether or not we matter, what our role is, what others expect from us, what we have to do, who we're supposed to be. So many layers of belief, some that bring us deep joy and purpose, and others that bring us so much emotional pain. There is some pain in life that we simply have to feel.
Grief when we lose someone we love. Sadness when our child moves away. These feelings are the counterpoint to the beautiful feelings of love that we've had the opportunity to experience in our lives.
I wouldn't change that for the world. But then there's the other pain that we create unnecessarily, simply because we have an unexamined belief about ourselves or our life. One that comes up quite a bit in my coaching is a thought like, I'm not worthy unless.
Sometimes we can even point to experiences from the past that make this belief so part of who we are that it feels impossible to let it go. But imagine if that were possible. What might be different about your life if you could choose, right now, a different path? So let me recap this reframe of common college transition advice.
Number one, be sure the support you give your kids is 100% about them and not about you. Take a moment to be sure you're responding to facts and not your fears. Number two, reach out to your kid as much as you want.
Just don't make it about you if they don't text you back right away. They love you. Don't make them prove it to you.
Number three, you're going to feel some emotions along the way. Your child is going to feel some emotions along the way. Believe in the possibility that both you and your child are stronger than you think.
Number four, you don't need a new hobby. What you really need is to learn that your mind creates your emotional experience. If you don't feel what you want to feel in your life, take some time to understand yourself and what your brain thinks is missing.
Some feelings you may need to hold space for, but if you're feeling dread, resentment, unworthiness, or uncertainty, you have an opportunity to understand those thoughts that are holding you back from living the life you really want for yourself. Number five, have compassion for yourself and empower yourself to create the emotional experience you want in your life. You may not be able to control the changing circumstances of your life, but you can control how you show up for yourself, the decisions you make, and maybe, most importantly, the decisions you make about you and what you're capable of.
You are always designing your life in your mind. Always. It's time that you take control of that creative process.
This is the work I do in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. It's time to empower yourself to live the life that's waiting for you.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
