Talking to Your Teen About College Stress? Don’t Make This Mistake!

If you're currently applying to colleges, you may find this article on managing college admissions anxiety helpful!

In brief, he came to me for help and I invalidated him. I shut him down while he was sharing and I lost valuable opportunities to empower him, build trust, and gain insight into what he was dealing with.

In this post I’ll outline this oh-so-common mistake well-intentioned parents make when their teens come to them for help AND how you can clean it up afterwards and turn your mistake into an opportunity to grow closer with your teen.

So here’s the story: 

My oldest son went off to college 3 years ago, he’ll be a graduating senior this year (OMG they grow up so fast!). 

During his freshman year, he had a really hard time. He ran into a lot of the troubles college freshman typically run into when they’re having a tough year:

• He felt like he wasn’t fitting in
• He was having a hard time making new friends
• He was worried that he picked the wrong school 
• He was worried that he picked the wrong program
• He was stressed and anxious

Somewhere towards the end of his first semester, he came home and decided to share his troubles with me. 

Now, I am a ‘do-er’. I do things. When I’m presented with a problem, I generally have 1 response: How can I find or create a solution? 

And that’s exactly the response I had when my son came to me with his college problems. 

Like most parents, I don’t like to see my kids unhappy. Seeing my kids unhappy makes me unhappy, it makes me anxious, it makes me want to help fix it! 

So my immediate response to my son sharing that he was feeling unhappy was to try and make him feel better.

SIDEBAR: This is something that all parents do. It’s something we learn when our kids are young, when they skin their knee and come crying.

The thing is, my son didn’t come to me because he wanted me to fix his problems. He came to me because he needed someone he could be vulnerable with, someone who would listen and be compassionate as he bared his soul.

Human beings can’t do two things at once, that means we cannot listen and try to fix problems at the same time. Instead of doing what he needed, instead of listening to him, I tried to fix him. 

I started telling him how normal his experience was, how it was something that everyone went through, that it was something that I went through. I told him how I cried every day during my first semester of college, how lonely I was, how I struggled to make friends, how I missed my family, etc . . ..

This culminated in him getting angry, frustrated, yelling “MOM, YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!”, and walking off. 

I was shocked, confused, and slightly hurt. “But I’m just trying to help,” I thought to myself. 

Here’s what I didn’t realize at the time. By trying to ‘fix’ my son’s problems I was invalidating him. Not a big invalidation where I was directly shutting him down, this was a subtle, unintentional invalidation, or as one of my psychologist friends puts it a ‘microinvalidation’. 

Adolescence is all about moving from dependence to independence. Freshman year of college is one of the biggest steps that adolescents take in this direction. For most adolescents, the first year of college, or the first year out of the house, is them attempting to stand on their own two feet for the first time. 

Part of that process is them learning to solve and navigate their own problems. They’re past the point when they want mom and dad to fix everything for them. They just want support from us while they figure out how to fix it for themselves.

My son didn’t come to me because he wanted me to solve his problems, he just needed someone to listen to them. 

I tried to fix his problems by telling him they were normal problems that everyone goes through. But by doing so, I was invalidating HIS experience with his problems. I was inadvertently communicating that his experience wasn’t important or significant because other people go through similar experiences. 

I was trying to support him, but really I was undercutting him. 

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

I knew that the conversation had gotten botched, but how? Was it something I said? Was my son just in an inconsolable mood? I was lost and confused, so I took my confusion to my community of parents. What was going on here? 

One of my friends helped me see where I had gone wrong, she was the one who introduced me to this concept of microinvalidation. (+1 for community!)

If I really wanted to help, she said, I should have just listened, and let him know that I was there for him whenever he needed to share what he was going through. 

Once I understood the issue, I understood how to clean it up.

THIS IS CRITICAL!

As parents, we make mistakes, it’s inevitable. But with each mistake is an opportunity to clean it up. This not only helps us get closer to our kids but it models the critical skills of taking responsibility and initiating reconciliation. 

I went to my son and said “When you came to me to talk about your college experience earlier the conversation didn’t go the way you wanted. You wanted me to listen to you and I didn’t listen. Instead I talked over you. I’m sorry and I promise in the future to just listen to what you have to say when you come to me with a problem”.

After that, we had a great conversation. He shared with me what he was dealing with at college and I listened to what he had to say.

This is easier said than done by the way. One of the hardest things for parents, for me at least, is to just sit and be with the fact that my kids are upset. But by validating what he was really going through, we were able to be with it together and he was able to work through his upset and come to a solution on his own.

He stayed at college, made friends, and has had an amazing college experience so far, even with Covid!

ONE LAST THING:

It can be tricky to know when your kids want you to listen and when they do genuinely want help solving their problems. 

One thing I’ve learned to do, which is a lifesaver, is when my kids come to me with a problem I ask them “Do you want help solving this right now or do you just want me to listen?”. 

That way I always know the best way to help and support them.