What to do when you get “the call”
It is bound to happen, sooner or later you are going to get one of these calls; you will hear your son or daughter’s voice and your heart will plummet … “um, mom, I need to tell you something”. And you wait for the other shoe to drop. If you are lucky it’s something like this:
- I’m in over my head and might be failing my math class
- My boyfriend/girlfriend just broke up with me
- I am really, really sick
- I hate my roommate and need to move out- NOW!
- I’m not sure this is the right school for me
- I have gotten a citation for underage drinking (happens more than you think)
Welcome to parenting the adult child! Your kids are now dealing with grown up issues without the safety net of home and parents.
So what do you do when you get “the call”?
Well, first off triage is important:
- Ascertain if this issue is time sensitive and/or involves law enforcement or medical personnel (some of you are reading this and thinking- girlfriend you are crazy but it HAS happened to me- my daughter had a very bad case of pneumonia her freshman year and was struggling to breathe- but CALLED ME because she didn’t know what to do- my answer? GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW!!!)
- If there is crying and it is difficult to understand your child, it is likely the breakup scenario or roommate issues. Take a deep breath and get comfortable – this might take a while.
- If there was an infraction, get as much information as possible to assess whether you need to be involved or not. Try not to panic. Many very nice kids go on to lead fully productive lives even though they have dared to drink an alcoholic beverage under the age of 21.
- Same goes for the failing grade/feelings about whether this school is right for me and just about anything else that might come up in one of these “calls.”
Between the two of my amazing and wonderful but somewhat normal kids I’ve had some real doozies, quite a few I never expected, to be honest. Even the ones I should have expected tended to throw me- maybe because while most kids experience break ups and bad grades, we parents cling to the ridiculous hope that somehow our little angels will be spared these (very common) bumps in the road.
As a coach (and a parent) I have learned that the situation itself is rarely as awful as either my child or my runaway brain would have me believe. Remember it’s our thoughts that tend to cause our suffering- not the actual event itself. Check in with your thinking and you can probably diffuse and calm down the situation.
Next- Listen!
- Take a deep breath! Seriously, I bet you’ve been holding it or at the very least you are likely breathing in a very shallow manner. You need all your brain cells for what’s to come!
- Listen to your child but before you jump in with what are possibly very good solutions, ask him or her what THEY think they should do. They will likely say “I don’t know” which is a perfectly acceptable answer… except that it isn’t. And at the end of the day if your kid was smart enough to get into college, I bet they can come up with their own solutions faster than you think (and by the way, those solutions will be way more palatable to them than the ones you try to shove down their throats- trust me I’ve learned this the hard way!)
This is going to be your first (but certainly not the last) stab at redefining your relationship with your adult child. Be kind to yourself and to him or her. Neither of you have to get it right the first (or second or thirtieth) time. You are both a beautiful, flawed, imperfect work in progress. The goal is to help your adult child become.. well… an adult, and you do this by turning over the bulk of the problem solving to them. Our job at this point is to be “support staff”- it is our children who need to take the role of CEO of their own lives. I believe this is the greatest gift we can give them and our most important work from here on in.
Parenting adult children can be tough. Do you need some help figuring out just how to let them grow up in a way that serves both them and you? Click here for a free discovery session with me. I can help you go from worst case scenario worrier to peaceful parent!