Margo E Ewing Woodacre - Ill Miss You Too: The Off-to-College Guide for Parents and Students

Dedicated to Ernie Woodacre with love

Copyright 2015 by Margo Ewing Woodacre and Steffany Bane Carey

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Originally published in 2001 by American Literary Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Woodacre, Margo E. Bane.

Ill miss you too : the off-to-college guide for parents and students / Margo Ewing Woodacre, MSW & Steffany Bane Carey. Second edition

pages cm

1. College student orientationUnited States. 2. College studentsFamily relationshipsUnited States. I. Bane, Steffany. II. Title. III. Title: I will miss you too.

LB2343.32.W66 2015

378.198dc23

2015002232

Contents

Preface

The creation of this book, originally published as Doors Open from Both Sides, resulted from a decision that we, as mother and daughter, made while dealing with our own emotional challenges during the off-to-college transition. As we wrote the book, we learned more about each other and how differently we handled many issues. The more we learned and understood, the more open and effective our communication became.

The 2001 publishing of our book and subsequent speaking engagements about the college transition provided the opportunity for us to speak to parents, students, and school counselors from all parts of the country. During our visits, people were eager to learn from our journey as well as share their own stories and experiences about this significant life transition.

A new book has evolved from this knowledge. The collective wisdom gained has enriched its content. We hope that Ill Miss You Too, through its frank and sometimes poignant messages, will help you, as parents and students, share a healthy college transition and future. Know that whatever it is you are experiencing, you are not alone.

Margo and Steffany

Acknowledgments

The greatest pleasure in writing our book has come from the opportunity to travel and learn from the many people we encountered, people of various ages, races, and economic status. Along with our family and friends at home, these people helped make our new edition a reality. For their support and encouragement, we are truly grateful.

Special thanks go to Bill Bane for his belief and support in this project from the very beginning; Ernie Woodacre for his insight, patience, and creative editing; the many guidance and college counselors, students, parents, and friends who were willing to share their feelings and personal stories; Gail Yborra for her research; brother Tom; and our editor, Michelle Lecuyer, and the Sourcebooks team for their expertise and enthusiasm in the creation of the new edition.

We are also thankful for long mother-daughter walks and talks, faith, and the yellow door on Andover Road.

Introduction

Doors Open from Both Sides

When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.

Alexander Graham Bell

For most of us, going through lifes transitions is like opening new doors. As we open them, we discover surprises, new findings, new challenges, and new fears. Sometimes, we need to close the doors to put closure on matters. Sometimes, we need to work to keep them open.

One major life transition occurs at the stage when the young adult leaves home to go off to college. This transition brings new experiences and challenges for both the parent and the child. Despite having lived under the same roof for a number of years, parents and children inevitably have different perspectives on some aspects of life. Consequently, experiencing the college separation process can affect them in different ways. This book, written by a mother and her daughter, describes how we each saw, felt, and learned from this particular transition. Our two points of view represent both sides of the transitionboth sides of the door.

With the transition come phases that have their own joys, their own challenges, and their own fears. The book starts with the senior year of high school and carries the reader through to the senior year in college and beyond, focusing a chapter on each of the transitional phases (doors) along the way. Drawing on our own personal journey, as well as experiences shared by other families and counselors, we provide poignant and humorous stories with helpful advice on how to avoid some of the common traps parents and students can fall into during each phase of the transition. This book is most helpful to families when read by both parent and student.

Ill Miss You Too presents specific insight into what parent and child experience during what family therapists Carter and McGoldrick (1989) call the launching children and moving on stage of life. For the young adult leaving the nest, this stage can be a time of excitement, but also confusion and fear. It is also the time for him or her to start to differentiate from the emotional program of the family, formulate personal life goals, and become an independent self.

For parents of the college-bound child, the process of letting go is not new. In a broad sense, parents start to experience the separation process through events such as their childs stages of toddlerhood, first days of school, and first vacation away from home and family. Despite these early experiences, the sense of loss and separation anxiety can be more pronounced when the young adult child goes off on his or her ownwhether to attend college, to take a job away from home, to get married, or to join the service. For the parents left in the empty nest, it is the time to learn to let go, redefine personal identity and relationships, and look ahead to the future as they start to change the relationship with their maturing child.

When young ones leave home, parents realize that they have more personal freedom, but of course, so do their children. From here on, parents will always have less control over the departing child. The maturing young adult feels a growing and sometimes exhilarating sense of freedom. Yet, while perhaps not always recognizing it, they still have an ongoing need for continued support and guidance. The needs and views of the two generations and the temperamental relationship of parent and child can often become challenging. Fortunately, with a mutual commitment to understanding each other, this time of life, despite its stresses, can be rewarding and fulfilling. As Erma Bombeck once wrote in her column: