Aliens are Invading

Are you the parent of a senior?  This one is for you!

                School is just around the corner.  For a number of years one of the major retailers used “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” as a tag line for the beginning of school and it certainly can be.    Fall is a time of excitement and a time to get back into routines, which while we many of us dread them, we all look forward to the routines.  However, for parents of seniors, you may be noticing a change.  You may have started to notice a shift at just about the same time that the Class of 2013 tossed their caps in the air. 

                Do you look at your senior and wonder, “Who are you and what have you done with my child?” In the past few years I have had the opportunity to watch from the outside as a few friends and family members have undertaken the task of parenting a senior.    I have to tell you it is daunting and scary even from the outside.  Seniors are in a strange limbo.  All the adults around them are asking them to come up with a plan for the next four years of their lives and they want to, yet,  the truth is that they themselves don’t feel ready or strong enough to take on this responsibility.  So instead, they lash out.  Your child, who has never given you much of a problem before, is now arguing your every word.  Your student who has been a good student all along, may slip up and get a bad grade.  It is all normal. 

                Moms, do you remember those last few weeks of your pregnancy.  The ones where people cautiously approached your office door each morning to see if you were still working or if the baby had arrived and they hadn’t heard yet?  Do you remember how you felt in those last days before they arrived?  You just wanted them out! I had a friend recently describe pregnancy like this, “You spend the first 3 months worried about keeping them in there, the next three happy that they are there and the last 3 worried about how they are going to get out.”  This statement rings true for so many of us, and senior year is no different.  This year is nature’s way of showing you, and your teen, that now is the time for them to move on, strike out on their own and start a new path.  You have guided them up to this point and now they have to choose. 

              Keep guiding them to what makes them happy but remember that they are really just scared and don’t know what to do with that.  And don’t worry…the aliens will leave and the child you have been missing all year will text you about 45 minutes after you leave them at college.    Good Luck!