5 Permissions to Give Your College Student
As a parent of two young adults and a teen and as a College Student Success Coach, I find a lot of wisdom and encouragement from the classic Healthy Parenting Scale developed by Diana Baumrind . She distinguished between authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting. (Her colleagues expanded her work to include Abusive and Neglectful Parenting and Pathological types at a later time.) For our purposes in this edition of my blog, we are focused on what differentiates the original three styles. The primary difference is degrees of control.
As parents, step-parents, guardians, sponsors, or primary caregivers, we all know how it feels to be charged with the long-term care, protection, and healthy development of a child. In the early days of parenting, there's plenty of control, and rightly so, IMHO! If I reflect on my own early parenting years, fear and control were my primary MO. I just wanted to keep them alive! Little ones are weak and vulnerable, and the world can be a scary place.
As a child grows, though, our parenting must evolve, which means that we have to change, too. As our pre-teens and teens become ready for increasing levels of responsibility and privilege, our "permissions" must change; we have to give away incremental control as they learn to move through the world independently. Part of Baumrind's theory is that the style of parenting employed-from the "hardened, overly-controlling" authoritarian style, to the "highly supportive and nurturing but sets high standards" authoritative style, to the "overly doting and indulgent" permissive style- will in many ways dictate the kind of behavior we ultimately get from our kids.
We all want our now young adult college students to continue to grow and thrive. After all, college is not just about getting a job; it's also about the student forming a healthy, resilient, and well-grounded identity separate from parents. We want them to emerge from college as employable, nimble, fully functioning, perspicacious adults who are responsible for their own actions, right? The way we parent through college can most definitely affect that outcome. Especially for parents of oldest children, for whom this is your first "college launch," as you navigate what it means to allow your child to thrive in this new college setting (not to mention in this ever-changing COVID landscape - a topic for a whole blog post itself), I invite you to consider the following five permissions that you can grant your college student under the heading, "lower control, high support" parenting that, according to Baumrind's research, can go a long way toward influencing a positive outcome.
1. Permission to explore - A college is a microcosm of the world! Where else can you listen to a lecture on "The Hellenic Influence on the Development of Early Modern Dance" in the morning, pop in on a service-learning project to help bag some lunches for an underserved community after lunch, and then go to a mixer on your residence hall floor the same evening to find out what your dating personality is? On a college campus, there's something to learn at every turn - in and out of the classroom. Give your student permission to explore new ideas, diverse groups of people, and novel experiences.
2. Permission to ask for help and to get it from someone other than you - Your tuition dollars are paying for an entire cadre of higher education professionals who are not only qualified to assist your student but who are eager to help. So when your student appears to need help, point them away from you and toward their campus services. Whatever you do, don't try to make the call or schedule the appointment for them. If your student is avoiding contact with a real person, most college websites have an Answer Bot that is a low interaction option that can get them started. You are raising your student for INdependence, not enabling, right? "What about the high support?" some of you may be asking. The high support in this scenario is your strong belief in and enthusiastic encouragement of your student working independently toward a positive outcome. Of course, there are "peak" service periods when many students are drawing on college personnel simultaneously, so it might appear that they are less available. If your student needs help, though, and reaches out to someone in Student Affairs, Student Development, or Student Health Services, or the like, they will get some answers and options for support. These are dedicated teaching and helping professionals. I know; I used to be one of them! EXCEPTION: If your student is at risk of endangerment, either from someone else or themselves, then yes, call someone at the institution pronto.
3. Permission to make mistakes - Raising a child to high school graduation is an amazing feeling. I have done it twice, and the third is on her way. It's a mountain top experience. The high of graduation, though, is unfortunately followed by the unfamiliar landscape of college to navigate, a whole set of self-regulation skills to learn away from the structure of home, and an increased level of academic engagement to rise to. All of that newness means that there will be some trial and error learning, and ultimately, some mistakes will be made. One of the best gifts you can give your student is to reflect with them on the mistake without too much judgment leaking into the conversation. The learning happens during the reflection. This is an especially valuable advantage to having an Academic Success Coach, btw.
4. Permission to change - A near lifelong friend of mine, Alice, who has raised two awesome adults likes to say to me, if I am lamenting some parenting struggle, "You know what happens when you raise your kids to be strong and independent? They become strong and independent." :-) Try to remember that parenting is not about raising a little clone of yourself. Of course, we have instilled in our kids our values, belief systems, and core family rituals that we hope will "stick," but the bottom line is that they are their own people. Give them permission to change. In the section on "Values and Diversity" of the First Year Seminar course I used to teach on a college campus, I used a metaphor that helped some students feel more at ease as they explored the content. I asked them to imagine the core values and beliefs taught to them by their parents/guardians as a huge anchor with a long, sturdy rope attached on a shoreline. If they imagine tying the rope around their waist, then they could use the anchor and the rope to gently extend the length between the anchor and themselves so that they could go into the water and see a much wider view of the horizon. Knowing the anchor is there, they are free to take in the shoreline's interest, complexity, beauty, and variation. Never abandoning the anchor, I advised them instead to use it as a reference point and landing place.
5. Permission to let go - This one is hard. Letting go does not mean not caring or not loving them. It does mean loving the person more than loving the idea of a particular outcome. I'm still working on this one!
As always, thank you for reading, and if I can help you or your student with the transition to college, please reach out. I absolutely love what I do. My clients report better grades, less stress, and feeling more in control of their college experiences. Feel free to follow me on social media on Facebook @CollegiateSuccessCoaching and IG @collegesuccesscoach, or to visit my website at www.collegiatesuccesscoaching.com . I post lots of tips and resources that many students and parents find helpful.