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Overwhelmed with Stress open .pdf of article
Parenting Strategies July 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Kay Kimball Gruder, SuccessfulCollegeParenting.com
Whether your son or daughter is venturing off to college for the first time this fall or returning after a busy summer, he or she will likely experience a sense of being overwhelmed several times during the next few months. While the first year can seem like a frenetic race to learn to navigate college as a whole, a student’s experience after the first year can seem like the weight of the world is on his or her shoulders. While colleges and universities recognize that there has been a documented increase in stress on their campuses, it is rare to find, in the “Useful Resources for Parents” section of their parent pages, any reference to publications that illuminate what is commonly referred to as the “campus mental health crisis.” While I can appreciate that colleges and universities don’t want to alarm parents and increase already-high levels of concern, I do believe that we can parent better if we have a sense of the full range of what our student might encounter, emphasis on “might,” during his or her college experience.
When a student gets to college for the first time he or she is immediately required to do many of the following:
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Live with people whom he or she might not choose as roommates
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Share a bathroom
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Manage his or her health and wellness
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Navigate a new geographic area perhaps for the first time
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Live away from home perhaps for the first time
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Be responsible for time management
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Talk with lots of unfamiliar people and authority figures who do not know them
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Move from perhaps being the star student in their school to being one of many stars
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Share their talents and competencies to illustrate who they are
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Care for personal needs (schedule hair cuts, order prescriptions, etc.)
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Manage money or a budget
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Maybe shop, cook and pay bills if housed off-campus
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Learn and follow new expectations, rules and policies
A returning student might also need to navigate some of what a first-year student experiences, but the bulk of the pressure and stress usually turns toward academic performance and career exploration. Your returning student, depending on what year, is likely dealing with:
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Choosing a major and minor
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Picking up the pieces from maybe poor grades during the first year of college
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Exploring careers through internships
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Applying for internships, jobs, graduate programs
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Increasing academic expectations and workload from professors
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Taking more difficult courses
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Changing personal relationships
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New living situations
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Maybe studying abroad and having to navigate another new environment
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Feeling economic pressure
Through it all your student is also going to classes, juggling homework, maybe working part-time, playing a sport, and involving himself or herself in other co-curricular activities. Maybe your student also has a disability or an existing mental health issue that adds stress to his or her college experience -- how many hours are there in a day?!
College Of The Overwhelmed, by Richard Kadison and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo, is a must- read for parents of college students. We send our children to college and ultimately wish for them to be happy and to gain new skills, knowledge, and perspectives, but college is not always a happy time. “What parents don’t realize is that despite this appearance of comfortable status, secure environment, and pleasant social world, a multitude of hidden problems have caused a steady and alarming rise in the severity of students’ mental health problems across the nation in colleges and universities large and small, public and private.” (p.5) In reading College Of The Overwhelmed you are provided with scenarios of normal developmental issues that occur during college and you are given heartfelt examples of students who faced a range of dilemmas and worked through them in various ways. The book also identifies many of the stressors encountered in college “…the journey can be fraught with the developmental pressures of fitting in, getting along with roommates, exploring sexuality, and addressing the myriad of questions that come with the transition form adolescence to adulthood. And as if that weren’t enough to handle, the pressure-cooker atmosphere on campus is intensified by academic, extracurricular, parental, and racial and cultural pressures.” (p.35)
While colleges often recommend books that embody some aspect of “letting go,” it is my opinion, with over 22 years as a student advisor in higher education and parent coach to parents whose students are often struggling, that College Of The Overwhelmed is a valuable parenting resource. The authors inform parents about what colleges are doing to create strong services and resources for students, and it offers parents advice on how to effectively guide their student through enhanced communication, anticipating challenges and being aware of the warning signs of mental health and medical concerns. “Consider that the goal of communication with young adults changes when they are in college. Instead of communicating solely to tell your child what to do, now it’s helpful to use your conversations to strengthen your connections.” (p.186) College Of The Overwhelmed, while an alarming title, offers parents and students tips and strategies to work through both common and less common situations that arise by the very nature of having young adults living away from home. After reading College Of The Overwhelmed you will likely feel more knowledgeable and better prepared to support and parent your student through the many physical, emotional, academic, and mental demands that he or she will encounter during college.
"Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it." – Lily Tomlin
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Kay Kimball Gruder
