Full Circle: From College Counselor to Mother of a High School Senior
Mar. 18, 2013 at 09:00 AM | By Sara Kyle | Comment Count
From deciding where to apply to taking those first steps onto campus to receiving a degree, join Hobsons over the next few months as we follow students, counselors, and their families on the path from college choice to completion. See more in the series.
Sara Kyle is the associate director of College Counseling at The Blake School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is also the mother of two daughters attending St. Olaf College.
I don’t quite remember the question but it was something along the lines of how colleges would interpret her application. I am a college counselor, so I simply responded in the same way I would to any of my students. Laura, our daughter, snapped back, “That’s not true! You don’t know what you are talking about!” Although my husband and I each have more than twenty-five years in the college admission profession, in this moment, I knew I was having an authentic parent experience and no amount of professional expertise could change the fact that in my daughter’s search, I was mom.
Being a mom, and supporting our daughters in their college search as a mom, rather than a professional, has helped me understand the process at a deeper level and from a new perspective.
The college search process, from research to application to selection, is an emotional roller coaster for students. I always counseled parents to be the foundation beneath the roller coaster, not passengers riding the ups and downs with the student. Now I understand deeply how difficult it is for us as parents to separate our own emotions from that of our child’s process. However, we cannot allow our conflicting emotions to influence the necessary steps our children need to make toward independence and self-discovery. As tempting as it is to relieve the stress by taking on some of the “tasks” of the process, our children need to own their process. With each “adult” conversation, email or phone call our children have with admission professionals or their high school counselors and teachers, they are learning more about being self sufficient, an essential skill for their success in college and beyond. As parents, we can coach from the sidelines, but we should never step between the student and the logistics of the process.
As parents, we often believe we know our children better than they know themselves, yet we really don’t know everything about them. Throughout the college search process, students grow to understand themselves better, which allows them select schools that will fit who they are as a person; a school that will help them be their best selves. I discovered that by talking less and listening more.
When Helen was researching colleges online, she said, “Wow. This college says international study is really important, but they only have four programs and one is in Washington DC.” I still don’t know what college she was referring to, but in that comment, I knew she had specific criteria important to her, I knew she was bringing her critical thinking skills to her research, and I knew she would make good decisions in her process.
A little adjustment gone awry.
When our older daughter left for college, I was unprepared for how hard it would be for our younger daughter Helen to adjust. The empty seat at the dinner table was just too hard for all of us, so for six weeks we ate in front of the TV. At Thanksgiving, when we had finally adjusted to our new normal (and returned to the dinner table), I overheard Helen saying that after Laura left, she especially missed family dinners. We had unknowingly made the adjustment that much more difficult for her. Letting go is challenging, and sometimes painful, for parents, yet every family member is learning to let go in their own way. Some younger siblings are worried about increased parent attention to their lives, others are mourning the change in a close relationship with a sibling who is no longer in the home - even the realization that Helen and Laura couldn’t raid one another’s closet was an adjustment. Family dynamics change with each departure and helping each member of the family adjust is an important part of what parents need to attend to in this process.
Although we miss our girls and life with them in our home very much, I have learned that life in the empty nest is okay too. We treasure the times we have with our girls, yet also enjoy the time we have together without them. I guess that is how it is supposed to work, and work it does.
Online resources for college planning:
National Association for College Admission Counseling
ACT
College Board
Fastweb.com