@Trisherella I appreciate your story. How I picked where I would apply:
Has some engineering majors
Has a USCSA team whose competitiveness/selectivity matches my USSA points profile (ski racing stuff basically)
Not be religiously-affiliated
Bonus points if it’s close to or a short train ride from my grandparents and aunt in Connecticut, which Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and MIT are.
I am fortunate enough that my grandfather is contributing to my education, and applying to some selective schools was a prerequisite for that support.
Either way, I am and my parents are (were?) very satisfied with the list of colleges to which I chose to apply.
@ski_racer I applaud your maturity in this matter. I really do think your mom could benefit with speaking to someone about her feelings. Maybe as another poster suggested, your Dad could be helpful in this situation. As what most people would describe as an over-involved parent, I find your account of your mom’s adjustment issue troubling. My DS is also a senior and I am most definitely not limiting him but expanding his freedom. You seem to be the kid who has never given her parent’s reason to worry about your choices, so you mom should be allowing you more freedom, not taking it away. I see this as preparation for college because you have to learn how to manage all the freedom (and responsibilities) you will have in college. Is hard to think about my son leaving - yes. He will be going to DC which is going to be a plane ride away. I know I will miss him terribly, but as a parent, my job is to raise children who can manage in the real world. That they have prepared you to go to college should be seen as an accomplishment, not a loss. Your mom may need help to see it this way.
@sahmkc actually, now that you mention it, my dad has been starting to use that exact argument with her. It doesn’t necessarily work to persuade her, but he is using it.
You’re so sweet to worry about your parents, and you’re very insightful about your situation and your parents’ feelings. I would suggest trying to spend more time with them as a family so they have more memories to share and can feel close to you now. It may not completely alleviate their anxieties, but at least they’ll have something positive to focus on.
It’s very hard to send a child off to college, especially when they’re travelling so far away. They’ll suffer for the first year probably, but it will get easier after that.
It’s hard. I have to check myself too. I will never forget dropping my DS off for his first Mommy’s Day out program. He said “Bye Momma”, walked straight in and then sat down to play with some toys. All around him kids were crying, kicking and screaming. I walked out of the room and immediately started crying because he didn’t even care that I was leaving him! The teacher came up to me and said these words to me “You have done this right. He trusts you and knows you will come back to get him. He is confident in himself and your love for him.” I will never forget that my job is to raise these kids to leave me thanks to that wonderful teacher. It’s hard but keep telling your mom what an amazing job she has done to raise a confident young lady who is ready to tackle the world. Tell her she has prepared you and taught you the values you need to make good decisions. These things that she has taught you will go with you, even if she can’t.
Your family life has helped you become independent and responsible. As @sahmkc said, your parents should take pride in who you have become. I was proud when my kids took the next steps in life and were ready for each. They weren’t as independent as you when they left for college.
My only question is whether you could talk to your Dad about talking to your Mom. Could he help her let go a bit or realize what she is doing or would that be toxic?
Or you cold start being a real piece of work and then they’ll wind up thinking they can’t wait until you are out of the house. Just kidding.
As I mentioned before, I suggest talking to both your parents about your leaving, your observations, your feelings. Rather than going through your dad to manage your mom, sit down with them both together or one on one. The reason I say this is, as a mother, I wouldn’t be too happy if I found out my family was going behind my back brainstorming a way to manage me rather than dealing with me directly - or at least trying to. I know different families work in different ways but I value transparency and honesty. Being able to advocate for yourself and communicate directly and calmly shows maturity, IMO, and is a good skill to learn that will help down the road with roommates, professors, bosses, etc.
Some families just don’t have these kinds of talks… I grew up in one. Would have looked at me like I was a Martian if I’d tried. But it could work for the OP.
If it makes you feel any better, my parents were the complete opposite. I wish they would have cared more. Since I was the youngest, they threw a freedom party after I left for college.
If every time your mom is around, you have a deep, emotion-laden conversation with her, maybe she’ll decide she’s looking forward to you leaving for college. I’m kidding but only kind of. I don’t think it will hurt to try.
Perhaps you could promise to have weekly phone call (or skype or facetime), with emails occasionally in between? DS went to school 2000 miles away and was supposed to that. We don’t get the regular “heartbeat calls” (to know he was still alive) or many emails. Wish we had, but I survived
Letting go of my son was difficult. His sister made so many bad decisions I had a tendency to think the worst. Even my son had a year of terrible decision making but luckily he grew out of it before his senior year. I had to bite my tongue to realize that he wasn’t making bad decisions anymore. He is 12 hours away. What made it easier was him sending my pictures (still does). I wish he had done it a little more. It made me feel closer to him. I have his schedule on my wall and we do a short text between classes a couple times a week. Talk to your mom about how often and when she would like to hear from you when you are away. Make sure to talk to her more often in the beginning. She is just worried and hers is coming out differently. She is scared that something could happen now that you are so close to leaving for college. I know. My daughter ran off with a boy just after graduation and has never gone back to school. As parents we hear stories like that, hear of school shootings killing or drunk drivers taking the lives of Seniors, of kids being arrested for alcohol, drugs etc. Even is we know our kids are good we start to worry even more about the other person, the friend, the driver, etc. It is hard as a parent not to worry in the best of times but having a Senior about to leave is doubly hard. Everyone reacts to it differently. Your mom is exerting control to “protect” you.
See if you can set up a movie night with her. I really wanted my kids to do this and they rarely did. When they did it meant a lot. Talk to her about thinking of things you could take to school with you. Maybe make an early list together. Engage her in the process. Talk about making your final decision, where you would live at each choice etc. It may help her to see you value her opinion.
Therapy seems like overkill. Just talk to them. Tell them that you know this is hard on them, that you have noticed (what you have noticed) and that you love them very much and they were good parents. This is now what you are SUPPOSED to do, and aren’t they happy you can?
It will sink in. It’s hard. The best thing you can do is make a soft response. When my youngest went off to campus (though it was a residential prep school), he made it easier by keeping in touch all the time. He would send me texts almost daily about funny stuff that happened in class, or did I remember to do X or Y. He still does. And he says a lot of appreciative things about how much he misses us and that he realizes he had a great childhood.
@ski_racer I think it’s normal for your mom to have the empty nest syndrome before you leave for college. When my older daughter was about to go away for college (out of state), I was very emotional for a few months imagining I will lose her forever. But when the move-in day finally came, we arrived at her dorm, got her room set up, said goodbye, it was easier than I imagined. Now we FaceTime almost every night, and I feel like she has never left. We have a routine that no matter how busy we are, we always text each other “good night” before going to bed. So, just start making some plans with your mom that everyday you will call/text/Skype/FaceTime with her before bedtime.
Maybe for when you have to come back for a 9 pm curfew. both funny and not. But probably not in OP’s oeuvre.
Sorry to hear about your daughter @momocarly. What I gather is that this is not a talking family. I’m not sure that talking with Mom to discuss future arrangements at a rational level would alleviate the underlying sense of loss of control. She is acting out in response to her feelings of a pending lack of control – and probably, her current sense of lack of control over OP’s actions, caused by a combination of HS kids growing up and her travel schedule. Even with daily phone calls once the OP is in college, she won’t have it.
My son has a friend who would come over to our house after school in high school (probably middle school also). We had a trampoline in the yard with this whole safety netting thing going up 10 feet or something so that people couldn’t bounce off the trampoline and into the yard… My son, the friend and a couple of other kids would play games on the trampoline (and sports more generally). The friend’s mother works in economic development and would be in places like Mali or Cambodia for a month at a time. After he’d been coming over for quite a number of months, she heard about the trampoline and forbade the kid from jumping on the trampoline (without of course looking at it or the safety netting) and for a while, I think, coming over to the house at all. It seemed like a draconian response that arose because she realized she had lost control. Relative to some other friends who were definitely druggies, my son was a great influence. Generally light drinker. Would stay over at someone’s house rather than drive back if he’d had anything to drink. Didn’t do drugs. Played board games. Was close to top of his class. Keeping her son away was probably not a great choice from a purely rational standpoint. We did some things to reassure her there was oversight and she relented at some point. But, it was the same kind of acting out coming from a sense of loss of control.
There are a few things one could do technologically, OP. With iphones, one can set computers up with Find My iPhone or Find My Friends so that she could see where your phone was. I think there is an Android version of Find My Friends. Not sure you’d want her to know that or if it would help, but would probably provide more piece of mind knowing that you are tucked into bed at night than a daily text.
@shawbridge she brought up the idea of the phone tracker thing to the family, but everyone basically shot it down. My dad thinks it’s creepy, and I have to say, I agree. Until I do something that warrants that type of oversight, I think I deserve to not be watched all the time. Plus she forgets stuff that I told her about multiple times starting weeks before and demands to know where I was when I get back, even if it was something like seeing a movie with a friend or doing volunteer work. I think the tracker thing would put her on edge even more, since I often go places without her to do mundane things that she forgets about.
I don’t know yet how far I’m going, but I’ve started to talk to my parents more. I tell them more about my day rather than just saying it was “good,” I give up some Friday nights for family fun, and just generally throw myself at them more than I used to. Maybe by the time it’s time for me to peace out, they’ll be sick of me already :))
All jokes aside though, I’m pretty much giving them a last hurrah to make up for the distance that will inevitably come.
