I loved Julie Lythcott-Haines’ How to Raise an Adult and had the good fortune to hear her speak last spring when she visited Charlotte. The book, like Julie herself, offers straight-talk to parents and teachers who take the responsibility of preparing future generations for whatever awaits them very seriously.
In a nutshell, she tells us to give our kids more space and time to become themselves without our constant interference. Sitting amid an audience of hundreds of parents, I couldn’t help but notice that there was not a person, including myself, who was not laughing and cringing all the way through her talk.
As a dean at Stanford, Lythcott-Haines saw first hand how easily thrown freshmen were in the face of any challenge. After being “overparented” — and therefore never having to do anything completely for themselves while also never feeling total independence or pride in the wake of their achievements — these high flying young people with high GPA’s were having a ton of trouble acclimating to college life. They were — are — suffering from acute anxiety, depression, and worse. Having accomplished their parents’ and often their own dreams, they were finding the reality to be both a bit underwhelming and somehow also overwhelming.
Frank Bruni’s editorial today, “The Real Campus Scourge,” adds an important layer to the discussion about how we are preparing young people for the places, situations, and demands they will confront. I read it just after talking with my niece, a newly minted college freshman who described finding it very hard, in these early days of freshman year, to eat regular meals, find people to connect with, even work out at the gym.
In his essay, Bruni hits the nail on the head: college, at least at first, is lonely. That college freshmen feel alone has nothing to do with the way they were parented or the fact that some may be like snowflakes that melt in the heat. Says Bruni, “In a survey of nearly 28,000 students on 51 campuses by the American College Health Association last year, more than 60 percent said that they had “felt very lonely” in the previous 12 months. Nearly 30 percent said that they had felt that way in the previous two weeks.”
Those numbers are pretty staggering, but what they really confirm is simply the fact that being alone is, for most of us, lonely. Also, people leaving home, if they are loved and lucky, miss home. Years ago this was true and it is still true today.
Tomorrow, I’m spending some of Labor Day collecting things for care packages for my five nieces and nephews who are currently in college. I wish I had the time and the funds to send one to each of my past students, too. This blog post will have to serve in the place of those hundreds of boxes full of symbolic hugs that I would send out tomorrow if I could.
It’s not easy to raise — or be — an adult. But it’s also not something any of us have to do all by ourselves.
I think you know why this brings me to tears. xoxox