<p>She has waited for this for years! Got herself accepted with scholarships into Parsons in NYC. We are in NC. She has attended month long pre-college programs in NYC for the past two summers - she understands about being away and she loved those summers. Going to college in NYC has been her dream for 5 years!</p>
<p>She has not been crying for hours. Afraid to be so far away from her family (all 4 of her siblings plus baby niece live within an hour of us here in NC). Says what if she needs us, what if she is alone with no friends, etc...etc...</p>
<p>Two other factors: breakup wth boyfriend last night (no big loss here, believe me!)
and possible hormonal (but I didn't think so).</p>
<p>I am sure some of this is normal for some kids. From your experience, please give me advice. I want to say, "Get over it! You will be fine!" but I don't think that is the way to handle this. Help!!!</p>
<p>I have found there is an even balance between excitement and nerves, even though I am about to realize a dream in a few days. The nerves are very stressful. Break ups are stressful. Hormones are stressful. Stress builds and causes panics. You don’t need to tell her to get over it, but she may need an understanding shoulder to cry on and an, “it’ll be okay.” Because it will be, she just needs to get out there and give herself a shot to like it there and be successful there, and right now she needs someone to remind her that no matter what happens, it WILL be okay. That’s what I need from my mom right now, anyway.</p>
<p>We just took our freshman daughter to college.</p>
<p>She was upset as we left the house, and increasingly excited as we moved out of the force field of home and into that of the university.</p>
<p>It is natural to grieve on leaving and to be apprehensive – but she will feel better when she arrives in NYC, especially as she meets up with her fellow travelers at school.</p>
<p>Oh, the poor thing. I just read this out loud to my 17 year old daughter and she said: “it’s the boyfriend thing. Trust me, it’s the boyfriend.”</p>
<p>You know you can’t say: “get over it.” You need to be empathic and compassionate, even if you don’t get it. She just needs someone to reassure her and tell her everything is going to be fine. Because everything will be. </p>
<p>And give her an “out.” Tell her that if after this semester it’s not working, she can come home. Of course, she’s never going to need that “out.” She’s going to make friends and have a wonderful time, but maybe she just needs to know that she can always come home if she has to.</p>
<p>lindab, I’m guessing you’re a Mom. Which means you were a teenage girl at one time. So, doesn’t anything here ring a bell? If not from personal experience then from adjacent experience?</p>
<p>Oh, my, it would have been the breakup for me! My parents didn’t like my boyfriend, either - they had no clue what a HUGE deal it was when he broke up with me. I was Devastated beyond words. That’s a hard time for it to happen, even if it is for the best.</p>
<p>I stayed in my hometown for college, but lived on campus. I remember being dropped off at my dorm and just crying my eyes out (my roommate was a sorority girl who hardly ever made an appearance). It was really hard being away from my parents, even though I was only a few minutes away from their house, and my dad was a professor ON campus, lol.</p>
<p>Oh yes, I do feel for her and have been anticiapting my own meltdown. She and I are very close.</p>
<p>I agree - once we get on the road, to the airport, flying into LGA, it will take on a new feel for her. And the exctement will return.
Just hard now - this is more than I was expecting from her.
I also agree it is the combination of everything. This is huge! She is #4 of 5 but the first to really go away. </p>
<p>She is sleeping now - very early for her, but she needed it. She asked me to lay down with her for a few minutes. Very sweet. : )</p>
<p>It sounds normal as is SNAFU (situation normal all f***** up). It so painful for parents to watch, but this is part of the process. Different kids handle it in different way. Some other ways are withdrawal, anger, false bravado.</p>
<p>And there may be the occasional kid who is just fine.</p>
<p>They are saying goodbye to their childhoods. The boyfriend just makes it more so.</p>
<p>I feel for her.</p>
<p>FWIW: My D survived four years of college in NYC and had a wonderful time. Now she is heading off for a masters in London, five time zones away. (Makes it hard to talk.) Hm. Maybe I’ll be the weepy one this time.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your D’s accomplishment of being accepted into Parsons. I hope things go well for her.</p>
<p>eek! I like my son’s girlfriend well enough, but the plan has been they will be breaking up to go to college. It’s really the best plan. Even IF (and huge if) they are meant to be together (not), it’s important to strike some independence and see where life takes JUST YOU! This said, my younger D has told me that the GF is crazy in love with S and is of the mindset that maybe they wont break up. This is a recipe for disaster. </p>
<p>It would be my argument that you go back to the 60’s here and say, if you love something setting it free and to see if it comes back to you would be the best tack here. Because the likelihood that one of them is going to meet someone or in some way hurt the other because it’s college. And truth is, if you’re not out there having a pretty good time, than you will forever regret not embracing the whole college experience. </p>
<p>Don’t know how far you live from the airport in NC…but…if not too far…you really aren’t that far away. You may be “closer” (time-wise) than some of her friends who are going to school in other cities in NC.</p>
<p>There’s also the slight problem that if going to school in NYC…specifically Parsons…has been her dream…she’s starting to wonder…what if it doesn’t live up to what she’s hoped for? And now she needs a new dream. </p>
<p>But…if she’s PMS, has just broken up with boyfriend, is sleep-deprived…it’s probably fairly normal that she had this meltdown. </p>
<p>Be a sympathetic ear…while gently guiding her towards the wonderful new experiences she’ll have.</p>
<p>I predict that once she is on campus and talking to the other freshmen, she will perk right up. Hope I’m right. Hang in there and good luck to both of you.</p>
<p>D is junior, away just 3.5 hours. Still in failure to disconnect with her HS friends, her room at home, us (parents). We are going thru trauma every time she has to go back to school. She has literally tons of friends at college (in-state) also, including some from her HS. And she has great time there and overall keep saying that her college has been a perfect fit for her, she got into extremely selective program that has been accepting only 10 freshmen every year and cancelled now, so she feels extremely lucky. So, despite all of that, she just loves to be at home every summer. She just moved into awesome apartment at school, so maybe it will change, have to see.</p>
<p>If she was going to have a meltdown, better that she have it now than two days after classes start! She will be okay. I imagine some of it is just letting go after years of striving; maybe the reality of her achievements and the big life changes just around the corner are finally becoming clear. I bet she’ll be stronger, more focused, and happier after her meltdown, and it will only take a few days, if that. Good luck to both of you!</p>
<p>Have also been experiencing D’s last minute tears - without a BF issue. Everyone tells me to expect your college-bound offspring to be difficult to live with the last 2 weeks. My D is also just now realizing how far away her college is…</p>
<p>lindab, Megabus just publicized deals for $1 trips between “selected cities in the northeast and midwest”. I don’t know if NYC is a selected city - but maybe you can check it out and get her interested in using it to visit a friend attending a college in another city? That worked for one evening of peace in our household.</p>
<p>We had a major meltdown last year about the time the first of the friends started to leave. D was one of the last group to leave, so she wigged out the last weekend the friends were all together. It was more for the loss of childhood, things changing etc. everybody going different directions. After having a wonderful first year now she laughs at her reasons for crying that last weekend. Yes things change, people change, friends are still friends, now they have more to talk about and also expanded their own circle of friends with the old friends bringing new friends from their respective schools into the mix. They traveled as a group from Ocean City Maryland to Jersey shore to New Hampshire/Boston. It has been a wonderful experience for all of them.</p>
<p>I was musing about D’s reactions vs my own - long, long ago when I was starting college. For me, HS graduation was when it sank in that “I will never see a lot of these friends again”. I think it is very different today - with e-mail, Facebook, cell phones, etc. It is much easier to stay in touch with the more peripheral friends who, in my day, would not be close enough to actually telephone occasionally.</p>
<p>It’s an emotional time, for kids, wondering what will change as a result of leaving home. I remember leaving behind a boyfriend, 800 miles away, when I left for college, maybe worse than a break-up because I didn’t emotionally move on to life in my college–it took a year longer to break up, and then more time to get over it…</p>
<p>I hear often about kids regressing at this point, climbing in bed with parents, crying on the plane, in the hotel, and so on. They are leaving everything they know, everything that feels safe, for a big unknown. During those times we need to be completely accepting of the their sadness, reassuring, and just there for them. They do get beyond it pretty quickly–usually by the time they are moving into the dorm, they want parents to get lost.</p>