THE COLLEGE VISIT
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 75.
Hello, friends. So I am back from a whirlwind college tour. First, I took my younger son up to visit colleges up in New York, and then I visited my older son at college for Parents Weekend.
I got in more steps during those three days than I think I've gotten for the past three months. It was truly a lot. But I was struck by getting the chance to experience the full range of being part of a series of college admission tours, and then my first Parents Weekend with a son actually in college, all in the span of 72 hours.
So I thought I would share this experience with you as I reflect on all of the thoughts and feelings that came up for me over the course of the weekend. And also, since I've been doing the series on mindset traps, I thought I'd also share how I noticed my brain falling into these traps over the course of the weekend. And actually, also as I reflect back on the first college tours I took with my older son only a few years ago.
So much has changed for me in just a short period of time. The days are long and the years are short. Has it really only been two years since I embarked on this college admissions journey with my older son? Well, if I'm honest, the journey felt like it started much earlier, well before junior year.
I remember my son talking about college in middle school. I guess his friends were all talking about going to Ivy League colleges. What were they, 11 or 12 years old? Already feeling this pressure to get into a good college.
I know, or at least I hope, not every school community fosters this type of pressure so early on. But before I blame others, or certainly my son's middle school peers, I probably have to take some responsibility on myself. Like most moms, I've wanted my boys to be successful at school.
I encouraged them to work hard, praised them for achieving good grades. Did I talk to them about getting into a good college in middle school? No. But there's no question that my actions demonstrated to them that I thought their performance in school was important.
On the one hand, I don't think this is a bad thing. I guess I could make the argument that if I never set these expectations, then they'd have to set the bar entirely on their own, decide for themselves whether or not school was important. And I don't know how many 11, 12, or even 15-year-olds are really excited about school.
But my oldest son was. He was curious, and he set the bar for himself honestly higher than I ever could have. I have to admit that for a long time, I thought this meant I was doing something right as a mom.
I certainly didn't take credit for his curiosity and his work ethic. But even as I say this, I realize that might be a lie. I was proud.
Even early in high school, I started thinking about him going to a really competitive college. We actually did a weekend trip to MIT where he participated in a program taught by MIT graduate students. This was just his freshman year.
I hung out in Boston while he took classes for, I'm not joking, 12 hours a day for three days. And he loved it. This journey got me thinking about where my son would be going to college.
I imagined some exceptional institution, and it didn't have to be MIT or Harvard or Stanford. I just imagined that he was headed for great things. But let's face it, in today's competitive world of admissions, there were never going to be any guarantees.
I knew that no matter how curious and hardworking my son was, that it would be an uphill battle. The average SAT score for these competitive colleges is 1500 or higher. The average.
It would seem that if you want to get into these schools, you need a 1500 or more SAT score of 4.0. And then it would seem that you have to do some pretty extraordinary things on top of just being a good student. And not just being president of the student council or volunteer of the local food pantry. At least this is what my mind was telling me.
Every time I read an article on college admissions, listened to the advice of my son's college counselor, or chatted with other parents in high school, every single piece of data continued to reinforce my belief that what my son was doing, the incredible hard work he was putting in, that somehow it wouldn't be enough. But this story isn't about either of my sons and what they've done or how they've applied themselves. The story is about me.
Because my thought that was driving me was, this is going to be an uphill battle. And then there was a follow-up thought, something along the lines of, I need to do whatever I can to help him. And if you think about it, this thought, I need to do whatever I can to help, this thought I found is a pretty universal thought for us as moms.
It doesn't matter whether your child loves or hates school, whether their gifts are academic, athletic, artistic, or in leadership, or honestly, yet to be determined. No matter our kids' opportunities or challenges, we take it upon ourselves to do whatever we can to support, to help. I think this is so hardwired into us, this motivation to help.
But when we're not aware of our own motivations, our feelings, and how they're driving us to help, but also potentially driving us to try to control outcomes for our kids in whatever arena, when we're not aware, not self-aware, we can create a miserable emotional experience for ourselves, but potentially also harm our relationship with our kids, the last thing we would ever want to do. So two years ago, my oldest was a junior and was in the midst of the hardest year of high school. For the first half of the year, he worked exceptionally hard as usual.
But here I was thinking that he should be doing more. I was thinking about the summer before his senior year, that somehow that summer should be spent doing something really meaningful, something extraordinary, that one thing that would make him stand out even more. And in my defense, because I might sound like a tiger mom, and I'll admit I was, but also he had expressed interest in these summer programs and actually had on his own researched these opportunities.
This was something he wanted. And so in my mind, I was simply encouraging him to follow through with this. But meanwhile, two things were happening.
His school and extracurricular workload were crushing him. And at the same time, for the first time ever, really, he was starting to have social interests outside of school. On the face of it, you'd think this was a really good thing.
All work and no play is no way to live a life. My son deserved balance. But suddenly I worried that he wasn't getting enough sleep.
He was keeping up with his schoolwork, but I constantly worried he'd fall behind. He had absolutely no time to work on the ridiculously complicated and difficult summer program applications I thought were so important. We started fighting.
For the first time in our lives, we were fighting constantly. I said many things I still regret. As I look back at that time, I remember catastrophizing constantly.
It was like I had this fairy tale image of what my son's life was supposed to look like. And suddenly all I saw was disaster. Let me ask you, is there anything with your child that you want so badly for them that you're willing to do anything to help them get it? I wonder also if you regularly take time to question two things.
One, whether or not they really want whatever it is that you want for them. And two, what you're making it mean if this very important thing that you want for them doesn't happen. With my clients, I've explored so many different permutations of this problem, whether it has to do with your kid's academic success or mental or physical health, their social lives, the college you want them to get into, the team you want them to get on or have more playing time with, the recognition you want them to receive, the way you want them to take care of themselves.
All of these challenges have come up in my work with my clients. The bottom line is that each and every one of us moms just want our kids to be safe, healthy, happy, and successful. And I say just because it seems so obvious, so basic, but also anything less than this feels unacceptable to us.
Certainly our kid's safety and their health is critical, non-negotiable. This is our base level of responsibility as a mom, right? To help them steer clear of danger and take care of their physical needs. How could we want anything less than their basic health and safety? Even when it comes to happiness and success, we can worry that their mental health will be in jeopardy if their friendships are insecure or if they don't have a support system around them.
We can feel as if their mental health could be in jeopardy if they don't succeed in whatever way we think it's important for them to succeed. The stakes feel so incredibly high. It's not just that we want them to be safe, healthy, happy, and successful.
It's that we can make it mean that not achieving those things could mean that our kids are going to be in serious trouble. God knows the most important thing in our lives is our kids. And that's why as much as looking back at the way I supported and yes, tried to control my son during his high school years, in my effort to help him have the best possible chance to get into an incredible college, as much as I can look back with shame and judge myself for the times I did more controlling than listening, I also wholeheartedly know that in my mind I wanted the best for my son.
I have yet to meet a mom who doesn't want that for their child. And so there's a part of me that has compassion for myself no matter how much I messed up. Because at the heart of it all, my intentions were coming from love.
Albeit love mixed with panic and anxiety. What I've realized is that we can have all or nothing thinking around our kids' safety, health, happiness, and success. Get into a great college or somehow face failure.
Have a close group of friends or be lonely and miserable. Stay away from drugs and alcohol or get addicted. This all or nothing thinking around our hopes for our kids leads to an all-encompassing anxiety.
And then a drive and a need to control our kids to fix whatever it is we think that might be standing in their way of achieving our goals for them, whatever they are. I really want to ask you to think about those goals you have for your teen. In particular, what is that goal that has you waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety? I want to take a look at this in the context of the college search because for all of us as moms, that step after high school is kind of the crowning moment, a significant milestone, if not possibly the last significant milestone over which we have any real influence.
How will we measure our success in terms of our child's health, safety, happiness, and success when they embark on their next chapter after high school? Because this report card at high school graduation, it feels like it's a leading indicator of how our child's going to manage the transition to college or wherever they're headed after high school. Throughout the journey to college, we're working so hard to help our kids achieve the best possible outcomes for themselves. And this isn't a competition among our kids.
This isn't about what one kid does over the other, although we can fall into the trap of comparing as a way of measuring whether or not we're falling short in our efforts to support our kids. But ultimately, this is our own internal competition with ourselves, our own perfectionism against our expectations of what might be possible for our child and our commitment to helping them do whatever it takes to achieve that. It's so crazy to think about how I was utterly convinced that my son had to do something more just to achieve an outcome that, quite frankly, doesn't matter.
The name of the college is literally a circumstance that doesn't matter one bit until our kids decide to apply themselves, work hard, achieve whatever goal they have in mind. The name of the school, the major they pursue, the friend group they have around them, whether or not they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. We're convinced that these circumstances are going to be the things that help ensure our kids will be happy and successful.
And I'm here to tell you that's a lie. The only thing that's going to create our children's results, the only thing that's going to impact the possibility of them achieving their own personal definition of success and happiness is their own perspective. In other words, it's about what they really want.
Contrary to our nagging and reminding and hoping and praying, our teens aren't going to do a damn thing to achieve that success unless it's theirs, unless they own it. I realized that I was spending so much time trying to control my son's actions to get him to achieve my definition of success and happiness. It was more mine than his.
As my son was growing up and I observed him taking so many of the right actions, studying hard, striving to get good grades, I took these circumstances to mean that he wanted what I wanted. And when he was younger, I think that might have been true. But as he grew up and started exploring his own perspective, separate from mine, I didn't stop to hear him when he started questioning the importance of the end goal.
When this son said to me, maybe I won't go to college, I near lost my ever loving mind. Because to me, it didn't fit with the image I had of my son, of what I thought he was supposed to be, of who I thought he was. I didn't allow him even a moment to doubt whether or not this path was going to be right for him.
I just had so utterly decided that my way was the right way. So as you can imagine, with this being my mindset, our college tours together were pretty miserable. I carried this all or nothing thinking with me throughout the entire process.
I ping pong between thinking everything would turn out okay, and of course my son would go to college, and then thinking he was literally going to throw it all away. All that hard work down the drain. It took my son really pulling away from me for me to wake up.
I realized that the real problem wasn't about anything my son was doing or not doing. The problem was me. I was trying so hard to control my son to get him to fulfill my vision for what success meant for him.
How hard I was trying to get my son to meet my expectations, that I completely shut myself off to what my son's vision of happiness and success looked like. And here's something even more profound. I wasn't giving my son the respect and space to have the chance to figure this out all on his own.
Even if that looked like him wondering about all of the options in front of him, not just the ones I was recommending as right. If you're going through the college process with your own kids, it's helpful to take a step back and ask yourself what it's really for. It's so interesting to reflect on how much pressure we put on ourselves as parents to help our kids get into college when there's no guarantee that success will be waiting for our kids on the other side of that.
Statistically, college graduates earn slightly more money than non-college graduates. But I also know of several ultra successful entrepreneurs who dropped out of college. For me, my wish for my sons to go to college is only part about money.
To me, it's about options. At 18, how many kids know what they want to be when they grow up? College is a gift. They get four years to figure out who they are.
Four years to delay entering the workforce and having financial responsibilities. Four years to explore what it is they're really interested in so they'll hopefully go on to find a career about which they're really passionate. If we're honest, how many of us have actually even found that in our own lives yet? God knows I think about my journey and finally finding this work and finding this mission as a life coach.
And I don't know if I needed college necessarily to prepare me for the work I'm doing now. What I needed was life experience and the journey, the hardship, the empathy created by me experiencing and overcoming my own challenges. My life has been a winding path that makes so much sense in retrospect.
But if I knew how it all ended up, would I have made the same choices? It's interesting to consider. Getting back to our kids, I know we all want our kids to be safe, healthy, happy, and successful. But have you really stopped to ask yourself what you think success looks like? What do our expectations mean in terms of what our kids need to do to prove they're happy and successful according to our standards? And how most importantly that might differ from what our kids want.
This might mean that they're not going to choose the path we think that's best for them right now. It might mean they apply themselves less than we think that they should or that they take risks. What if they need to go through the journey of figuring out what health, safety, happiness, and success looks like for them? What I'm realizing is that I can almost guarantee that what they want is going to look different, at least in some ways, than we hope for them or expect for them.
And maybe that's okay. When I think about letting go of my boys, this is the part that I think has been most transformational for me. Because I realize now with my son in college, and granted he's only an hour and a half away and I've seen him now four times since he left for college, even still this is significantly less than I got to see him when he was living at home.
So now that he's in college, when I talk to my son or when I get to see him, we've had some of the most powerful talks that we've ever had in our life together. And I realize one of the biggest things that's changed is this. I haven't let go of my son, I've let go of being right about what's right for him.
When I sat down to do this episode, I actually thought I'd want to take you through the many emotions I experienced while going on a series of college admissions tours with one son and then experiencing my first parents weekend with the other. But I think what struck me the most in reflecting back about this beautiful weekend with my sons is how present I was to the experience. And this is in stark contrast to how I approached that first series of admission tours two years ago.
And frankly, also how I thought about what letting go of my son would involve as I looked ahead to him going away to college. Because as I mentioned, that whole experience of the college process the first time around involved so much anxiety on my part. Back then, I honestly believed that my involvement was critical to the process.
I somehow thought that by focusing on my own expectations for my son, I was doing him a favor. And what I realize now so clearly is that I had it all wrong. There gets to a point with your teens where, to be quite honest, your expectations of who they should be are absolutely irrelevant.
It actually doesn't matter anymore who I think my son should be or what expectations I think they should live up to. Because I have the privilege of being able to accept them and love them for exactly who they are, who they are right now, who they're going to be next month, next year, for the rest of their life, for as long as I get to be a part of it. I get the privilege of witnessing the unfolding of these beautiful human beings and how dare I think that I know how their life should unfold.
It's so powerful really embracing this mindset, my friends, because it's allowed me to have compassion for my anxiety when I still sometimes think that maybe they're going down the wrong path. My sons will tell you I still offer advice. I still offer unsolicited reminders and encouragement.
A little less so with my son in college, but old habits die hard. The difference is that when I offer these reminders, I acknowledge that at the end of the day, my sons are the ones who are going to have to decide for themselves whether or not my advice is right for them. And there's nothing I can do to change their perspective, nor should I. The hard reality is there may be some mistakes that they make along the way that they need to make.
There may be some extra effort that they could have put in that leads them to have regret, and that's an opportunity for them to learn. Or not. So as I walked on the college tours with my younger son this time around, I was just so curious about whether or not he liked the schools, and what he was looking for, and what really mattered to him.
I didn't waste any energy on trying to push my agenda. I got to sit back and really notice, appreciate how my son's taking ownership of the process and being clear about wanting to apply himself. He's demonstrating that this is important to him.
I'm so in awe of the effort he's making, and also don't have it in my head that he should be doing anything different than what he thinks is right. And again, that doesn't mean I don't offer my opinions, but he gets to take them or leave them. He gets to do what's right for him.
Now look, some of you might be listening and thinking that's all well and good to sit back and let your teen take the wheel when they're generally on the right path, but what if they're really messing up or in trouble? And here's what I want to say to that. The only one you have control over is yourself. So you get to set boundaries and enforce consequences.
You get to decide how you want to show up and respond, but that's you exerting the power you have over you. At the end of the day, none of this involves controlling your child. They still get to decide how they want to respond to however we show up, whatever boundaries or consequences we put in place.
But as I think about the college process, I'm focused here on our expectations around how our kids should self-actualize, and that is literally only up to them. I'm so excited to figure out where my son decides to apply, where he gets in, what his experience will be like. I have no preconceived notions about what that should look like, and it's so fun.
I get to be here to help if my son needs me. Do I want my son to be happy and successful? Absolutely. Do I believe that he can get into an exceptional college? Without a doubt.
If there are times ahead of us when he's disappointed, I'm going to be disappointed with him, but there's no voice in my head that says he shouldn't ever feel disappointed because that's part of life. We all get disappointed sometimes, and we can take disappointment as a sign of failure or merely an invitation to work a little harder or try something different. This journey with our teens is such a gift.
It's a gift to be launching these human beings and having a front row seat as we watch them self-actualize. So after the college admission tour with my son, we came home briefly and then it was off to my older son's college for parents weekend. It was a hollow weekend, which I've come to realize is celebrated like a week-long holiday in college.
Needless to say, our visit put a bit of a cramp in my son's social schedule, but luckily he was more than happy to show us around during the day. I embraced all of it. I was so curious about what his life was like and was also so very aware of all of those thoughts that I had that popped up, those expectations about how maybe things should be a little bit different.
But I've learned that those expectations are about me and not my son. There are times when my son has a very different perspective about his life, but maybe he's not wrong. In fact, what's true is that he's exactly right for himself right now.
Being 100% open to witnessing my son's experience allowed me to get blown away by how much my son has matured in only a short time away. He demonstrated so much self-awareness. He's already talking about wanting to make the most of his college experience and that's something I couldn't make him think if I tried.
He's figuring out how to create balance in his life and that's his journey. I get to sit back and watch it all unfold. If I were still focused on who I wanted him to be, I would be missing all of it.
So here's my invitation to you. You don't need to let go of your teen. You don't need to let go of your relationship with them.
And to be honest, you don't even need to let go of your hopes and dreams for your child. But I do want to invite you to be aware when those hopes turn into expectations that you try to force on your teen so that you can feel better. Those expectations can turn into blinders that keep you from seeing who your child really is right now.
They keep you from seeing and appreciating how they're self-actualizing in their own way. This is your opportunity to be present for your kids. Even if those days that we have with our kids feel fleeting, every minute with your child becomes this precious gift.
You get to love your child for exactly who they are right now. Don't miss it, my friend. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, MOM 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
