Anyone else have a child who is having a hard time making the transition?

jkiwmom
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:52:20 +0000

My son is also having a hard transition. I had a horrible first semester in undergrad, but stuck it out and loved all my years there (5 total), so hoping that will also be the case with him. But I’m losing sleep over this too and I want to rush in and save him, but I know that he’s a grown man and I would be robbing him of developing any kind of real life skills if I do that. It’s really hard to watch our kids go through any kind of emotional pain.

He was really happy there the first month and now…I don’t know…we’ll see…the word “transfer” has come up. He’s not into the party scene, sports, but is social and loves to hang out with big groups of other more pensive kids. He’s into indie music and is more of a hipster/artsy kid -but also incredibly smart (spoken like a true mother ;)). He’s finding it hard to find others that are like him although there are some that he’s hanging out with from his previous HS. He’s wanting to get into different housing for next year where they students are a much more like him. He won’t know whether he’ll get into that housing until early December, and if he gets into that then he could stay all the remaining years there.

I am of course retracing our steps, wondering why he shot down Wesleyan, Oberlin, and Haverford…why, oh why… Instead his college list was mostly schools that were similar to where he is now attending. He’s always been in similar schools since elementary, middle, HS and I think the decision to attend where he is now is mainly due to that’s what he knew. I had a strong hunch that he would be better off at the schools I mentioned above, but he shot them all down and mostly due to dumb reasons such as the name, or some other rediculous 18 year old observation. I know this isn’t my fault that he’s now struggling, but it certainly brings up a lot of, “why didn’t I…”. When in fact, he made his own decisions and this really isn’t about me. Oh, anywho, I know this too shall passs, but I am definitely right there with you.