Category Archives: Introductions

(Originally published in this blog as “A Parent’s Journey through University Transition: The Day of the Send-Off and What to Expect When You Go Home”, subsequently updated and published in Culturs Magazine)

(In Part 1 of this two-part series, we covered how an Adult TCK parent can handle the anticipation of sending a child off to college via the RAFT system. This part offers advice on how to handle oneself on the day of the send-off.)

The Day of the Send-Off

Keep calm and cry in the car on move-in day.  Unless you have an expressionless-cry face that allows you to tear without the dramatic expressions or don’t mind people seeing your cry today, cry in the car before you step out and when you step back in. If you have any emotional words to say that you didn’t get a chance to say before you left the house, say them in the car, before the hustle and bustle of moving things in your young adult’s room. Chances are, however that you all will be too busy on this day to have time to be as emotional as you have been at home.

Try to save your emotions for when you are away from your young adult to lessen the possible emotional impact on them. They may seem emotionless today or can’t wait to break free. However, know there is much going on within them as well. They may be fighting tears themselves. It helps to have a companion or other family members during this send-off for emotional support and help ensure you are driving safely.

Get out of the way helpfully. Allow your young adult to focus on what they need to get done in the way that makes sense to them. There is most likely a part of them, even if it is small, that is trying hard to not succumb to the overwhelming mixture of sadness, excitement, fear and tremendous courage. Helping with practical things that won’t get in their way of taking charge of how to handle move-in day and the move-in week schedule can bring out your young adult’s personal self-determination. In turn, seeing your young adult’s sense of self-determination can help you as a parent have less concerns about their adjustment. If they make mistakes, it helps them make better choices.

Day one of being their own boss. Today is a day your young adult will need to be the boss while receiving your age-appropriate guidance. It’s a smoother drop from being a co-boss on move-in day to being the only boss after the family leaves for your young adult than being completely dependent on parents until the last minute. Allowing them to take ownership of their decisions and balancing the parental task of guiding your child will require you to be flexible today. Your young adult is most likely trying their best to be strong and brave.

It would be wise to still provide solid and well-timed guidance of important matters, such as making decisions that ensure personal safety and security, knowing the common traps that target college kids for money and practicing fiscally sustainable options for purchasing textbooks and supplies. However, as young adults, they will only need to be shown how to do such things so they can practice making these decisions themselves. In reality, your guidance as a parent will not really end, but will likely involve more and more respect.

Find your co-supervisor in your young adult.  Certain things like billing and matters related to your child’s student account will still need to be supervised by you as a parent, but you can start to share that responsibility with your young adult. Your guidance will be teaching them how to supervise it themselves and as a co-supervisor, follow up on anything confusing or overwhelming while allowing them to be part of finding the solution.

Image by tomekkno from Pixabay

The drive away: your young adult in your mirror is closer than they appear. For some parents, there may be an urge to follow your child like a parent peering around a corner to watch their child on the first day of preschool or kindergarten. The instinct to watch over our children never ends. However, rest assured that while the days of bonding and closeness during childhood become part of the past, that bond only transitions in type and is simply adjusting to make way for your young adult to grow.

How do you just leave the child you raised every day for almost two decades and just drive off? By knowing the bond will continue, just in a different way and letting go until this new stage of parenthood starts to feel like a different type of adventure with new challenges and rewards.

What to Expect When You Get Home

Some parents may feel a sense of emotional displacement when they get home. Eighteen or so years of default emotions that come with being parent of a growing child is a long time to live out day in and day out. Despite the rational knowledge your child will one day go to college, it doesn’t prepare you for the emotional process. The logical understanding of the college transition is intertwined but not concurrent with the emotional process.

The sense of emotional displacement can come from a series of “minus-one” sudden realizations in a parent’s thought processes and associated emotions, especially during regular daily routines. You may catch yourself sitting at work suddenly remembering you won’t need to prepare as much food for dinner. You may be driving on a street on a regular route and suddenly remember your child isn’t just several miles away, waiting at home. You may walk through the grocery aisle past your child’s favorite snack, feeling hollow. These can be excruciating moments of grief you didn’t expect. The “minus-one” sudden realizations land harder on our emotions than our intellect.

It will simply take time to live through reassigning different emotions to the various routines slowly, one by one, day by day. These emotions of grief can be so intense. Some parents may even wish the best years of raising their child(ren) would never end. However, just as we became our own adults, we parents have to think forward because it’s in the days ahead that we find a balm for the past that we miss so dearly.

Letting Your Love Cherish the Past While Meeting Your Child in the Present

If we move forward alongside our adult children, we get to watch them become who they will be to their friends, work colleagues and community, with fresh eyes that grow to respect and honor the journeys they are on, the joys they cherish, and recognitions they will have earned on their own right. The best part is: the adult person you grow to become proud of is the same little person you raised and it only adds to what you already cherish about them, never subtracts.

Just as you experienced a love so profound when you raised your child knowing one day you’ll let go, you only learn just how deep that love goes after you do.

(Originally published on this blog as “The Send-Off to Adulthood: A Parent’s Journey through University Transition Pt 1”, subsequently updated and published in Culturs Magazine.)

While the transition from high school to college is a significant milestone for Third Culture Kids (TCKs), often ending a pattern of frequent moves, for TCKs who become parents, the college transition of their child can be a chapter of profound grief beyond what’s anticipated.

In social conversations, the college transition for parents is often reduced to the two-word nominal term “empty nester.” However, the transition itself is much more involved and deserves its own grief process.

Being a parent is one of the most vulnerable relationship roles a person can have. The many instances of losing close friends, favorite teachers or role models and favorite local spots and comfort food, especially when repeated, lay deep in the emotions of TCKs, as they occur during the developmental years.

Yet, being a parent, holding responsibility for another human being’s developmental years is a role designed to prepare someone to part ways. Parents love with their all to one day let go.

Parenthood is a continuous journey of moving between the various roles from provider, nurturer, guide, educator, disciplinarian, protector and more. To do it right, parenting demands confronting your fears, insecurities and blind spots as well as applying your characteristic strengths, earned wisdom and from day one, natural instincts.

Of these natural instincts, the instinct to make room for offspring in one’s nest, from the half-awake feedings for a newborn, to the grocery lists with your child’s snacks, to the routine of coming home on a Friday in anticipation of a weekend with your child, doesn’t simply switch off when they turn 18.

Using the RAFT to float on the river of grief

For parents on the journey of college transition, David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken in the book “Third Culture Kids, Growing Up Among Worlds” provide a way to avoid sinking in a river of grief via the acronym RAFT, which stands for:

R = Reconciliation, which “includes both the need to forgive and be forgiven.”

A = Affirmation, or “the acknowledgement that each person in (a) relationship matters.”

F = Farewells, which includes farewells to “people, places, pets and possessions.”

T = Think Destination, including the “internal … and external … resources for coping with problems” at the next destination.

The following is how RAFT can apply for both parent and child as well as the parent’s grief process:

Reconciliation — If there are any unresolved issues that have weighed heavily on the relationship between you and your child, intentionally making time to name and acknowledge those matters together and process any hurts, apologies, forgiveness or grief together can be helpful. Internally for the parent, some issues may not feel resolvable, but admission informs future choices and distance offers perspective.

Affirmation — Likely to come naturally, when you share favorite memories about what you cherish most about your child, it can help affirm special aspects of their character and personality. This may help your child when they build new relationships. Internally for the parent, affirmation can also be a time to celebrate your accomplishment of this milestone as well as the losses you feel.

Farewells — Familiar to the TCK, this step for parent and child involves acknowledging the favorite activities, traditions, items and hangout spots together, and painfully saying, “bye for now” to each. Acknowledging the meanings while accepting the transition allows for your child to let go. Internally for the parent, watching your child let go can prompt you to honor the process and likewise let go.

Think Destination — Talk about what your child entering college looks forward to in addition to taking care of the logics of the transition such as the preparations for campus living and first-semester classes. You can also share encouraging words or advice about the new horizon. Internally for the parent, you can also look forward to new opportunities that became available as a result of the changes while grieving the transition. Plan out how you will access sources of support during intense moments of grief.

(In Part 2, we go into how to handle sending your young adult off to college.)