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 Posté le: Mar Aoû 27, 2013 12:15 am Sujet du message: Back-to-school issue: The dance of letting go |
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{Back-to-school issue: The dance of letting go}
When my daughter moves into her dorm room to start university this fall — armed with new bedding, a stack of books and the assorted ingredients for a new life — I will also be moving into new territory. Or at least a new phase in the life cycle of a parent.It is one I am approaching with caution.Not because I don’t want her to go. We will miss her cheerful presence, of course — the family trip from Halifax back to Ottawa after dropping her off will be subdued, to say the least. But her parents are as thrilled as she is to see her head to a small East Coast university.She is enrolled in the kind of program many parents secretly wish they could attend.But they would be wise not to say so out loud, unless they are prepared to face an onslaught.And that brings me to the unpleasant side of sending a child off to university right now: the parental criticism that is part of the package. It is as if all the gripes people have with the way kids are being raised — and there are plenty — get saved up for one last blast aimed at those sending their children to college and university. And,Michael Kors Purses, while some of the criticism might be valid, much of it is based on generalities and assumptions rather than reality.We are not all helicopter parents; I’m not sure I have ever even met one, and yet universities across North America feel they should give parents strict instructions on how to say goodbye to their children (quickly) and warnings to leave their helicopters at home.“Should you decide to park your helicopter in the middle of the freshman quad, you will be ticketed and towed,” wrote Barry Glassner, president and professor of sociology at Lewis & Clark College, and Morton Schapiro,michael kors canada, president and professor of economics at Northwestern University in an article that appeared in the Washington Post last year.(To be fair, they also recommended parents of freshmen remain closely connected to their children, but suggested parents “gently push their children to embrace complexity and diversity and to stretch the limits of their comfort zones.”)Yes, it can be bittersweet to watch your child move on to a new phase. Some parents handle it with more grace than others.Some, it is true, hover. Some actually do their children harm with their unwillingness to let go, others just take a little longer, as do some children. But most are happy to see their children grow into independent beings.And why wouldn’t they be? They are lucky. Just ask the parents of children who will never be fully independent.But even those parents who are happy to see their children go to university away from home might falter when it comes time to say goodbye. It is hardly a modern phenomenon, nor is it anything to apologize for. My father, many decades ago, wept in the family station wagon for hours before we could slowly drive away from the dorm my oldest sister had just moved into. It wasn’t exactly graceful, but it worked. And he probably wasn’t the only one.Today such behaviour would garner a strong rebuke or at least disapproving stares. Or maybe a hand-wringing article about the state of modern parenting. |
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