Laura Kastner - The Launching Years: Strategies for Parenting from Senior Year to College Life

PART I

THE FALL FLURRY
How to keep the college-application process and
planning for the next year from getting out of hand

WINTER IN LIMBO AND SPRING FLINGS
Senioritis involves far more than what meets the eye

THE BITTERSWEET SUMMER
How to manage spoiling the nest, pre-launch jitters, and
nagging concerns about readiness to leave home

PART II

FALL FLEDGLINGS
How to parent from afar: From minor freshman freakouts
to significant crises

HOME AGAIN BUT BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Why having your college student back in your home is a
mixed blessing

FINE-TUNING
Staying connected while letting go, knowing when to parent
actively, and attending to qualities young adults need to thrive

This book was created collaboratively by Laura Kastner and Jennifer Wyatt through a process of talking, drafting, exchanging ideas, and redrafting. Laura Kastner is the psychologist whose knowledge, insight, and clinical experiences are represented in the book. Jennifer Wyatts background in writing, editing, and parenting made her the indispensable expresser and translator of ideas. For claritys sake, we made the decision to speak to readers in the first person.

Families represented here are mostly fictionalized composites of real families from Laura Kastners experiences clinically and in launching workshops. Letters, quotations, situations, and dialogues have either been generously provided by parents or re-created in a way that is true to an actual experience.

During a two-year period beginning with the senior year of high school, most parents find themselves confounded by unanticipated challenges. Why are my daughter and I fighting like cats and dogs now that shes about to leave? a mother might ask. I cant make one request, remark, or recommendation without infuriating my senior. Whether its college-application issues, homework, or his social life, he expects to be treated as an adult, but is there no parenting role left for me anymore? another might wonder.

Vastly underrated as a complicated transition for parents and children alike, the launching years rival any two years of parenting for the formidable events they contain, the challenges and questions they raise, and their sheer emotional intensity. With so little emphasis in our culture on so large a phenomenon, families traveling through this passage can be taken by surprise, particularly since parents experience the lurch of life-transition issues at the same time as their child.

A child leaving home is a momentous developmental juncture, now more so than ever because todays parents are more focused on their children and their relationships with them. Pioneer child psychologist Jean Piaget used the term disequilibrium to describe the lack of stability individuals experience when moving from one developmental stage to the next. To say that families lose their balance and orientation during this transition is no exaggeration. Making matters worse, some families are now faced with a highly competitive, anxiety-provoking college-admission process, exacerbating the stresses of launching.

The Launching Years guides families through this exciting, inspiring, discomforting, and humbling two-year period filled with sentiments deep and rich. Written for families whose children are considering leaving home for college, it explores and emphasizes the following issues.

Parents who understand the developmental transition of launching and all that it entails will be more effective in parenting. They can maintain greater harmony in their family life and in their relationship with their child, present and future. Just as its helpful to know how to interpret a two year olds temper tantrum as an assertion of self, its wise to understand that launch anxiety on the part of parents and senior can be behind much of the havoc of senior year. A heightened awareness of the specific hurdles they are facing, along with an appreciation for why everyone is behaving as they are, can help parents navigate this stage more successfully and set themselves up for a mutually satisfying future relationship.

The elongation of adolescence leaves many parents surprised by how much longer they are actively parenting. The question isWhat is the nature of parenting as children mature? Now that military service, marriage, or employment are no longer the staples of life after high school, young people ages 18 to 25 within our culture are emerging adults.

It takes extraordinary resourcefulness for families to negotiate this new parenting terrain, unmapped by previous generations who engaged in far less parenting after their children turned 18 than we do today. To parent optimally through this period, parents need an ingenious blend of support and challenge. In times of trouble, parents support, guide, and even rescue their emerging adults whenever necessary. Likewise, for their growth and increased competence, we challenge them to be more independent and to learn their way in the world. Vignettes in The Launching Years bring this delicate dance to life.

Senior year of high school is inherently tricky to manage. Parenting during this year is orchestrated around preparing children for greater independence and, for many, around leave-taking. Although many students live at home while attending college, higher education has become a rite of passage with the majority of youth participating. Within our culture, heading to college is one of the ways that young people separate from their families.

The college years are not only an academic experience, but also the means whereby young people shed their reliance on parents, becoming less emotionally dependent on their support and authorityrarely a smooth process. With stress in college life at an all-time high, challenges of mental health, ideological dilemmas, substance abuse, and love-life and career decision-making abound. For various reasons, often practical in nature, many young people will drop out of college, and more students than not will take more than four years to complete a Bachelors degree. The Launching Years shows parents ways to be helpful and not harmful.

Knowing the ingredients for a successful launch from home gives parents some guideposts for building their childs competencies during this two-year period. Not all young people are ready for the independence of todays college campuses at age 18. Young people who leave home successfully have accomplished a series of developmental tasks, as described in our book