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[quote=Anonymous]Starting a new thread because this topic has been popping up elsewhere as kids finish orientation week and start classes.

Those texts expressing doubts and disappointments? Those teary phone calls? All normal - and rolling with it is key to this next stage of parenting:

From Grown and Flown:
https://grownandflown.com/help-college-freshman-homesick/

“I hate it here; I want to come home.” These are nine words uttered by a brand new college freshman that break a parent’s heart. We watched our kids work hard; we supported them in their college journey, dropped off an excited teen only days ago, and…now this. They are homesick.

Many of our teens have left everyone and everything they have ever known. Parents, siblings, pets, and almost every friend in their young lives are miles away. They now live in a small, often cramped dorm room, making a difficult transition even more stressful.

Every support system they knew and everything normal in their lives is gone. They quite literally don’t know what to expect. Feeling homesick seems an entirely rational response.

If your freshman is homesick, they are far from alone. According to the oldest and largest survey of college freshmen, 66% of first-year students report feeling lonely or homesick.

Maybe you, the parent, don’t remember being homesick. Those who study memory tell us that the end of an experience colors our memory of it. The collage of our senior year is clearer in our minds than what we remember of those first weeks of freshman year.

Maybe we toughed it out better because calling our parents was so expensive. But perhaps we were utterly miserable, homesick, and lonely and have just blotted out that unpleasant time.

Either way, like so much about parenting, our kids need our empathy and our ear, and they must figure it out themselves.

[b]Dr. Lisa Damour, renowned psychologist and bestselling author, explains that in calling their parents, many freshmen are handing over their emotional trash and by doing so, moving forward.[/b]

In a widely read New York Times article, Damour explained that when our kids were little, they handed us their trash and used gum and food they had chewed but chose not to ingest. When they are older, they offer up their emotional trash. [b]They tell us all of their worst feelings and, in the telling, unburden themselves[/b]; Damour states,

"I cannot say this often enough. Upsetting the parent is the actual solution", Damour explains. "One of the things I do in caring for girls is when they come to me upset, I tell them to come back the next day and we will talk tomorrow. I have yet to have a student at the same level of crisis the following day."

[Continued - with more insight and support for parents - on the website. https://grownandflown.com/help-college-freshman-homesick/ ]

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