PARENTING TEENS IN THE COLLEGE PROCESS—THREE LESSONS THAT GO FAR BEYOND EARLY DECISION | EP 207
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
If you're a mom of a teen or even an adult kid, this episode is one you don't want to skip, even if your kid isn't in the middle of the college process. Today, I'm breaking down three lessons I learned during the early decision process with my kids. Lessons that I now realize apply to every moment where your big kid puts themselves out there, risking disappointment and stretching into the next version of themselves.
Because no matter what your big kid is navigating, whether it's sports tryouts or job applications, auditions or internships, these same emotional patterns show up for us as moms. The worry, the helplessness, the fears and hopes, and the urge to fix everything.
So even if you're not in the middle of the college process, these three lessons will change how you show up for your child in every big moment in their life. So let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
I have to be honest, I could not have recorded this episode this time last year. Last December, I was in the thick of the college process with my youngest. And even though I was actively using all of these tools to manage my mind and stay present and not let anxiety take over, the truth is a huge amount of my emotional bandwidth was consumed by thinking about the early decision outcome we were anticipating.
Now, this conversation is going to apply to you even if you're not in the midst of the college process. But I want to spend a second just in case you're new to the process and you're not sure what I'm talking about with early decision, I want to give you just a bit of a primer. So early decision is a college's way of giving students the opportunity to apply early and hear whether or not they got in, usually early in their senior year, typically in December.
But with this process of early decision, if a student applies and gets in, they're committed to attend that school. There's also something called early action. You also apply early and you get a decision early, but you're not committed to go to that school.
So typically, kids apply early action or early decision in October or November and they hear back sometime in December. And if the news is good, some very lucky kids get to celebrate and stop worrying about the college process. They simply get to enjoy the rest of their senior year.
But many, many other kids find themselves diving back into applications throughout December to meet January 1st deadlines. And then they have to wait until March or April to hear the regular decision results. So all these details about the admission process aside, the fact of the matter is, as moms, we have absolutely no control over any of this.
We have no control over the admission process. And we realized pretty quickly that we also have very little, if any, control over our kids and how they choose to apply themselves through this process. But let's face it, even though we don't have control, we do have a lifetime of experience that has taught us that if you really want something, you have to apply yourself.
So as moms, we desperately want to help our kids put their best foot forward. We can't help but feel the urge to guide them and nudge them and help them be the best version of themselves. And this applies to everything we want for our kids, not just college.
It applies to summer jobs and grad school, other competitive programs, and eventually promotions and opportunities in their adult lives. There are so many moments where our kids will put themselves up for some kind of review, moments where they're going to be evaluated by the world, where it feels like their worth is on the line. And it is so hard to feel helpless while watching your kid care so much about something, while also knowing you can't protect them from the outcome.
So if you're in this place right now, if you're going through the college process and early decision results are just days away, or even if you're looking ahead to post-college jobs or grad schools and thinking, I have no idea how any of this is going to go for them, this conversation is going to apply to you as you navigate any moment where your kid is putting themselves out there and risking big failure. If you're going through this right now, I see you, and I know how stressful and difficult it can feel. The stakes around these major turning points, these liminal spaces where the next step is so unknown, the stakes feel incredibly high.
You can't help but think about the immediate disappointment your kid might feel if they don't get the outcome they hoped for. But you also think about how that disappointment might shape the trajectory of their experience. You worry about whether they'll internalize a rejection in a way that keeps them from fully embracing the opportunities that do come their way.
And then let's face it, there's comparison. It can be heart-wrenching to see other kids or moms post online about their good news while you're still waiting for yours, or worse, when you get the bad news. Of course you're happy for those other families, but there's also that twinge of jealousy.
It's wonderful that they got what they wanted, but I wish so much that that was our experience too. But on top of all of this, as moms, we take this so personally. Even though this is our kids' process, we can't help but feel like we've been the primary driver in getting them to this point.
So if they don't get the outcome they hoped for, it can feel like we've let them down. Which is heartbreaking because supporting our kids is the last thing we would ever want to fail at. Part of why these moments are so stressful is because it feels like we've spent their entire lives building towards these moments.
We've invested so much effort and energy and heart into helping our kids get here. And here we are, all in, completely invested. And yet we have absolutely no control over the outcome.
So if you feel overwhelmed and anxious about all of this, I get it. And last December, I was right there with you. But having gone through it with my oldest before, I did hold on to three lessons that I want to offer you as you head into the process yourself.
You can use these lessons to get through admissions decisions or honestly any moment where your kid is reaching for something big and you're holding your breath, hoping it goes well for them. These aren't strategies to help make the admissions process or any other process more successful. These three things are mindset strategies for you so that you can show up grounded and steady during these emotionally stressful threshold moments during your big kid's journey.
The first lesson is that your child's experience of this moment is theirs. And the truth is, it might look very different from yours. I want to illustrate this with a story from my own experience.
I remember sitting with my son in December when he got the news of his early decision outcome. We were all standing around him and my heart was in my throat. I wanted so much for the news to be good for him.
He clicked on the button and because everything's electronic now, you open the portal and either you're met with confetti, which immediately tells you the news is good, or there's no confetti. And if there's no confetti, there's this pause. There's this moment where you're reading the words and taking them in, but it takes a moment for your brain to catch up with reality.
As a mom, I knew that pause wasn't good. We sat there in this limbo that felt like a long stretch of time, even though it was probably only 10 seconds. And my son said something like, well, that sucks.
And after a quick hug, he left the room. That was it. There were no tears, no processing out loud or conversation.
Just this is what it is. Moving on. I knew for a fact that there was a lot happening in my son's mind.
And the truth is, there was a lot happening inside mine as well. What's important to recognize is there is no right way to handle this kind of moment. When faced with a rejection, your kid might be visibly upset and cry, or they might get angry, or they might shut down and just go silent.
They might act like they could care less, like they don't want me, I don't want them. Or they might just seem quiet and not want to talk. Alternatively, they might want to talk for hours, needing to verbally process what just happened.
The truth is, none of these responses are wrong. Whatever's going on in your child's mind is shaping their emotional experience, and that emotional experience is what drives their reaction. It is deeply personal, and it's something we ultimately have no control over.
Meanwhile, we're having our own emotional experience, thinking about the disappointment our kids are facing, wishing the outcome were different for them, and even wondering what we could have done differently to help support a different result. We're having an internal experience that generates our feelings, and that experience naturally leads us to want to comfort our child, to help them through it, to process it with them, encourage them to look on the bright side, and reassure them that it's all going to be okay. But as much as we want to fix it for them, we can't.
We can't change the outcome. We can't process their emotions for them. We certainly can't make it hurt any less.
This is why understanding that their emotional experience is theirs, and ours is ours, is so critical. Because it allows your big kid to have the space they need to process whatever they're going through. I'm sure in that moment, before my son walked out of the room, I said something about loving him and acknowledging his pain.
I'm also sure I probably said something trying to make him feel better. I guarantee I did. But none of those words were going to fix what he was going through.
It's so incredibly hard to see your child struggle without your own emotions getting triggered. We're already dealing with our own disappointment because we were hoping for that positive outcome too. But when your kid shows any amount of disappointment or pain, it's so painful to watch.
And then our emotions spiral even more. And again, this is why it's so important to notice that our emotional experience is ours to deal with, not our kid's responsibility. Adding the pressure of needing them to make us feel better only adds fuel to what is already a painful experience for them.
For many kids, this isn't necessarily the first rejection they've ever experienced. But it might be the first rejection that feels tied to so many years of effort. Years of working hard in high school and putting everything on the line for this one moment.
Having that effort met with an outcome that they didn't want is heartbreaking. And the best thing we can do is allow our kids the emotional space they need to process that disappointment while we manage our own emotions without making them responsible for how we feel. And of course, if the don't need any of this advice, you just get to celebrate.
But we spend so much time fearing the possibility of a negative outcome that I think it's helpful to remember these lessons now so that you can stay grounded and present for your big kid, no matter which way the decision goes. The second lesson I want to offer applies to college admissions just as much as it applies to any major acceptance process in life. The outcome of this one decision does not determine your child's future.
Our minds are so good at imagining the outcome we want and then building an entire picture of what life will look like if that outcome becomes reality. We tend to create this whole imagined future around what it would mean for a kid to go to this one school or to get this particular internship or get into this grad school. But if the answer is negative, it can feel like that entire future crumbles before your eyes.
The truth is, disappointment is a deeply human emotion, one we experience constantly when reality doesn't meet our expectations. We have hopes and expectations about how things will go, and when reality doesn't match that, of course we feel disappointed. But it's interesting to consider that we don't actually know that the outcome we'd originally hoped for would be better.
In fact, how do you know that something was supposed to happen? Well, because that's what happened. Reality is always showing us what was meant to be, even if it's not the outcome we hoped for. We can keep fighting against that reality, holding on to the disappointment of a future that never actually existed, or we can acknowledge where we are now and focus on what comes next.
And this is true in any situation where reality doesn't meet your expectations. I often talk about boundaries being the decision you make about how you want to show up, given the circumstances around you. The same idea applies here.
When you're faced with an outcome you didn't want, the only real power you have, and the only real power your child has, is deciding who they want to be in response to that outcome. When it comes to these transitional points in our kids' lives, the next steps around what that future looks like are really up to your big kid. They get to decide where they want to apply next if the answer is a no.
They ultimately have to decide how much energy to invest in the next round of applications or how they want to adjust their approach. That is their work. But we also can't help being emotionally invested.
We're not going to stop caring or stop supporting them, or suddenly detach ourselves from the process just because we don't have control. We're in it with them whether we want to be or not. But here's an example of how our emotional investment can feel difficult to navigate in these moments where there's a lot of pressure to figure out this next step.
For example, when you find out in mid-December that your kid didn't get into their early decision school, there's usually a lot of work that needs to happen between mid-December and early January. I mean, yes, some kids prepare early and get all of their applications done ahead of time, so they're not scrambling if they get a no in December. But I'll be honest, that wasn't our experience with either of our boys.
With both of them, most of the work was done at the last minute. So you have this tight time frame to figure out what your next steps are. But again, all of this is their work, their next step.
So what is our next step as a mom? How are we going to support our kids through this next step of their process? If we're coming from anxiety and fear that our kid won't be successful, we can very easily slip into hyper-control mode, pushing and hovering and trying to fix things and trying to make sure they do everything right. And if you've lived through this dynamic in other areas of your kid's life, you know that this fear-driven approach rarely results in them taking your advice. I mean, more often than not, especially now that they're baby adults, it results in them pushing our advice and efforts away.
That's why I go back to this lesson that's so important for us to recognize, that this one outcome does not determine your kid's future. Truly, even the next round of decisions doesn't determine your kid's future. I remember telling me, especially after the first round of disappointment, that it always works out the way it's supposed to.
And while that aligns with what I'm saying, that reality shows us what was meant to happen, in the moment when you're still holding on to the loss of a future you desperately wanted for your kid, it can feel like a bitter pill to swallow. So the perspective that has been most helpful to me was this. If you already knew that your kid would ultimately be okay and figure it out, how would you show up right now? Because the truth is, even if your kid didn't get into any of their top-choice schools, even if they didn't get into the programs they wanted, even if they didn't get the job that they applied for, eventually, they are going to find a path where they can go and thrive and be successful.
And sometimes, having to face disappointment becomes the catalyst that helps them become who they're meant to be. If our kids shoot for big goals and don't achieve them, learning that the next big goal will require more effort isn't a bad lesson. And as painful as it is to watch, these moments are often where their growth happens.
When our kids always get what they want, it only reinforces the effort they're already putting in. But the truth is, life is full of disappointment. And these moments, the ones we wish we could change for them, often become the moments that shape them into stronger, more resilient versions of themselves.
So when we think about our kids' growth and their trajectory, this moment is just one very small piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, where they go to school or what job they get matters so much less than the type of human being they're becoming. And if you can stay connected to that truth, that your kid is facing challenges and disappointment, and they will grow through it, then your role becomes very clear.
Your next step isn't helping them get into a specific school. It's helping them become the human being they're meant to be. And that includes acknowledging the messy, painful process of trying hard and failing, and then picking themselves up and learning how to move forward.
This is the work we've been doing their entire lives, my friend. And this moment is simply one more opportunity to remind yourself that this is your role, and it has absolutely nothing to do with which college they get into or which program or job they finally land. The last lesson I want to offer as you think about who you want to be in this moment and how you want to support your big kid builds on everything we've already talked about.
First, that their emotional experience is theirs, and your emotional experience is yours. And second, that this one moment doesn't define your kid's future, but instead is simply an invitation to take that next step. And here's the third lesson that's incredibly powerful to keep in mind.
Your most valuable resource is your unconditional love and connection, not your influence and control. It is so natural for us when we feel fear and worry over our kids shooting for these goals to slip into micromanaging and pushing and nagging. We want to offer advice and get our kids to work a little harder.
We worry about timelines and strategy. And look, some kids genuinely need that support. I'm not saying that being involved is wrong.
You need to use your own judgment on what level of support your child really needs. But more often than not, the most helpful thing that we can offer is our ability to remain calm during a moment that feels incredibly stressful. To be present with our kid as they process their emotions as they're going through it.
When we react from our fear, the message we can unintentionally send to our kids is that they're not capable. And I know that's not the message you want to send, but it can also be what they hear when our energy is anxious or controlling. So instead, what's helpful to think ahead about how you want to show up to these moments.
Showing how proud you are of your kid. Being confident in their capacity to figure this out. Remembering that this outcome doesn't define them, not even a little.
And cheering them on through the messy process of their life, rather than feeling like everything hinges on this one acceptance. Because ultimately, isn't this what we want to instill in them? Confidence in their ability to meet the challenges of their life. Not just this one challenge, but the many challenges ahead of them.
When college is going to go by in a blink, then there are going to be new obstacles, new disappointments, and new goals. And if we can hold the belief that our kids can figure things out, even when they aren't applying themselves in the way we think they should, that belief that they will eventually figure things out becomes an anchor for them. This is what we can offer our kids.
Unconditional love, not control. And truly, this is why it's so valuable for us to be very clear with ourselves about what we make this whole process mean. Because as much as these liminal transitional moments, these times of acceptances, the college admission process can feel like a performance review of our own success in motherhood.
And as much as we can sometimes default to thinking that the outcome of this one decision somehow reflects on how well we've raised our kids, the reality is that this moment has nothing to do with us. Our kids are facing these big weighted moments, putting themselves out there, risking rejection, wanting something so deeply. This moment is an invitation for us to not make it about us.
To practice letting our kid have their journey, letting them have their emotions, and letting them figure out how to navigate both the fear of rejection and the reality of it. To do that, we have to first believe that we can handle it. So much of the connection we offer our kids actually starts with our ability to regulate our own emotional experience.
When we know deep down that we can handle whatever comes, we stop needing our kids to shield us from disappointment. We stop needing them to be okay so we can be okay. And that's how we gain the power to show up in the way we truly want to, as the safe space that they can always count on to find unconditional love and support as they navigate the twists and turns of their life.
So here are the three lessons we talked about today. First, your kids' experience of these moments where they face rejection are theirs. They're going to feel how they feel and react how they react.
And your job isn't to manage their emotions. It's to make space for them and take responsibility for yours. Second, the outcome of this one decision doesn't determine their future.
Truly, their path is so much bigger than any single yes or no. And half the beauty of this season of life is watching who they become as they navigate these moments. And third, the most powerful thing you can offer in this moment and every moment is your connection, not your control.
Your steadiness and your confidence in your kid and your unconditional love, this is what your kid will remember and hold on to. These three lessons aren't just about the college process. They're really about this entire next chapter of motherhood, the season where our kids are taking bigger swings, facing bigger challenges, and stepping into their adult lives.
And we're learning how to let them. If you're feeling the weight of these transitional moments and you're realizing how much of your piece gets tangled up in your kid's outcomes, if you're wanting to feel calmer and more grounded and connected as your kid grows up, that's exactly the work I do in Mom 2.0. In this coaching program, you learn how to live into these three lessons so that you can let go of anxiety, build trust in yourself and your child, and show up with the confidence you want to feel in this stage of motherhood. If this conversation resonated with you, I would love to support you inside of Mom 2.0. You can learn more about it using the link in the show notes.
At the end of, my friend, this season of motherhood is a long journey of watching your kid become who they're meant to be. And my friend, you are becoming someone new right alongside of them. These moments stretch us, they humble us, and they invite us to trust in ways we never have before.
You are so much stronger than you think. No matter what the outcome is for your child, you can show up with love and confidence. And this is what they'll remember long after the decisions come in.
I'm sending you so much love as you walk through this moment with your big kid. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
