Getting Ready to Send a Teen to College

Welcome back!

This blog is a resource and I hope an inspiration for making our communities places that encourage positive and healthy growth for ourselves, our families and our businesses. Is it any wonder then that I feel so conflicted about the rite of passage that so many of us go through when it comes time to send our kids off to college?

Just when I’m feeling that my family is thriving in our “new urbanism” community, I’m helping one of us to LEAVE!

Most minutes of the day I’m fine, even excited about the thought that my daughter will be moving away to college in a few weeks.

Then there are those other moments when I wonder about all the things mosts parents worry about. Will she be able to get home from class safely? Will she comfortable with her roommate? Will she eat a balanced dinner each day? Okay that last question is probably Karma coming back to bite me as I promised my mom I would eat well when I was in college and existed on tea and Rice Krispies for about half my diet!

Everytime I think through the scary scenarios and get to the point where I’m questioning why we’re sending her away when there are perfectly good schools close by, I answer myself pretty quickly – because we want her to grow (and we want her to attend a REALLY good school).

When I was 18 I couldn’t wait to move into my university residence! Just the thought of being on my own and making my own decisions about my day to day life gave me an unbelievable high – without drugs!

I’m sensing my daughter is just as excited (though more low key than I was – thank goodness) – so I know we’re doing the right thing.

Often when I find the need to look for validation about some instinctive decision I have to make about parenting I think back to the Mutual of Omaha, well not literally that company but the show they use to sponsor on television when I was 5 or 6 years old. It was called “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”

Anyone reading this old enough to remember that program?

Anyhow, there were an awful lot of real life “human” lessons in those shows especially the “parenting episodes.” You know the programs that focus on say a mama bear preparing her offspring for life in the wild “without mama.”

I’d almost want to cry watching as a cub was being pushed/nudged/encouraged to start finding his own food and securing a separate place to call home…on his own. It was hard but as the handy commentator would tell us, it was for his/her own good and survival.

Like most things, practice makes perfect and perhaps the college environment is as good as we’re going to get for a “practice environment” that will help our kids young adults to become healthy, positive and contributing members of their communities.

NOTE: I have to plug Antioch College – not the school we chose for our daughter, but a school we thought about for many years. I’m hoping all goes well for changes happening at this phenomenal institution. The picture in this post features my daughter during a visit to Antioch, which is located in beautiful Yellow Springs, Ohio. I’d retire there