August 23, 2012

(Educators)Come September, many young peoplewill be leaving home to go away to college. Students and parents are excited about this new journey. But in addition to the excitement, there is often anxiety about moving out of the comfort zone of home and family. While the focus is often on the separation anxiety the student experiences at this milestone, too often we neglect the parents’ separation anxiety.

From watchfulness to surveillance, parents retain a varying degree of controlover their high-school-aged children. But when a child goes off to college, the ability to know what is going on in that child’s life depends on the child’s willingness to communicate and share information. Since it is developmentally appropriate for college-aged children to be separating and individuating from their parents, we can expect that many children will share less than parents might be hoping to learn. Not knowing, in areas where there was previous information, makes parents more anxious.

Parents express many different worries about how their children will manage when the parent is no longer so present in their lives. Anxietiesmay be about drugs and alcohol, or there are concerns about social and academic problems. Parents with children who may already be dealing with emotional issues, eating disorders, or learning disabilities can feel especially anxious.

It is to be expected that a parent would worry about how their child will manage on their own in college. This is appropriate and shouldn’t be confused with a parent’s separation anxiety. When a parent feels the need to contact the child repeatedly, can’t sleep, can’t stop thinking and wondering how the child might be feeling or what the child is doing, the parent may be experiencing separation anxiety.

Many parents who are worried when their children go off to college, are not aware that they are experiencing an emotion that is not simply based on the practical worries of safety or performance or the well being of their children. They have not recognized that they have been afraid that their children would move away from them emotionally, become different in a way to make their attachment feel less close and loving. Realizing this, thinking about separation and individuation as a developmental necessity, not a personal affront or wrenching loss, can help many parents resolve much of their anxious feelings.