Homesick at College: What Parents Can Do?

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The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Reena Ninan
So I feel like time is just moving so quickly, with a kid in high school, first child in high school, that it’ll go by so quickly. So I feel for those parents who have dropped their kids off for college. I can’t imagine that day. Lisa, you’ve been there.

Lisa Damour
I have been there, and now I have a daughter who is a senior in college. It is so weird. It is so weird. What you said, Reena, about time slipping away… One of the things I remember somebody saying to me when my kids were little, and I really found this, and I don’t know if you found this: It feels like time actually speeds up as they age. And I don’t know if it’s because, you know, when they’re little, like, little kids are really cute, but like, you know how they can be kind of tedious and boring?

Reena Ninan
Oh yes.

Lisa Damour
Like, the hours seem really long. And then, you know this: as they get older, the work of parenting usually goes down, and so then time just seems to go faster and faster. And I have a daughter who started high school, just like your son started high school, and I feel like she just kind of lives with us, but it’s not that much work. And so it’s true: as that time comes for them to leave, you do feel it kind of like sands through the hourglass, like grasping for the moments with them.

Reena Ninan
I’m thrilled we’re doing this so early in the season, because I think even though my kid isn’t there yet, I want to know how to deal with this before it even starts. I want to read you the letter we got:

Reena Ninan
Dear Lisa and Reena, thank you so much for your podcast. It’s made such a difference in supporting my son through high school. Now I need your help more than ever. He’s been at college for two weeks and is unbelievably homesick. He calls me crying every single night and says he can’t find anyone to hang out with. I want to support him, but don’t want to be in touch so often that he doesn’t connect with people at his own college. On top of this, my younger son is missing his brother, but if I’m honest, feeling a little overwhelmed by how much his older brother is reaching out to him. I don’t know what to do. Should we bring my college son home and have him try again next year? Should we go visit him or have him come home for a long weekend? He’s having such a hard time I don’t want to make it worse. Please help.

Reena Ninan
Oh my God, my heart in this letter. Is this concept of like being homesick your freshman year, is that common? Something you see often?

Lisa Damour
It is, and I’ll tell you, Reena, it’s something we’re seeing more. For so many families, the pandemic just brought everybody really close, really made them much more tight knit. We also have seen, statistically, kids are going less far away to college than they used to. In the wake of the pandemic, the kids are staying closer to home. Now, there’s a lot nice in this, right? There’s a lot good in this. But I don’t know it was like for you when you went to college, but for me, I was like, “All right, see ya!”

Reena Ninan
Yes.

Lisa Damour
I was sort of ready to go and go far away. And so that has shifted. There is a sense of wanting to be closer to home for a lot of kids having spent less time away from home before college. So this is on the rise. I think we’re seeing more of this, than we used to.

Reena Ninan
That is so interesting, your points about Covid. I hadn’t thought of that before. Give me a sense, like in this moment, what should parents do if your kid calls and they’re very homesick? What do you need to keep in mind?

Lisa Damour
Okay, this is heart wrenching for the parent, right? It is just grueling. And the letter has within it like a concern that I think is very real, which is: When there’s such easy access to your family, it can actually be that you don’t loosen those ties because you don’t have to. And so it makes it harder for kids to make ties sometimes to the college, and colleges worry about this, right? The ways in which kids are really in touch with their high school friends or really in touch with their family, that they’re not always doing as good a job as they used to integrating into the community. You and I had no choice, right? You had to integrate into the community.

Reena Ninan
Had to. Yes.

Lisa Damour
Could hardly reach your family. The goal of a parent in a situation like this is, of course, to take the call. Of course, to be available. But to have it be about, “What are the resources around you? What have you tried?” And what I can tell you, Reena, since you and I were in college, when we were in college, these resources were pretty good. They are so good now. Colleges are incredibly well designed, almost all of them, to have a lot of on campus supports for kids, whether it’s an RA or a dean of a student life or an advisor. No family needs to worry that they have dropped their kid off of college and that kid is sitting there with nobody to turn to and no resources available. If you are paying tuition for a kid to go to college, part of what you are paying for is a pretty impressive infrastructure to support them.

Reena Ninan
But this letter where it doesn’t seem like he’s making friends, right? How do you help a kid where you can’t start setting up play dates for him?

Lisa Damour
Right? No, it’s. True. Okay, so we’ve been together so long. You know me so well. I think you know what I’m about to say, which is, you know the rule I live and die by is: “You don’t make friends; you find them.” And so one of the things that colleges do, and definitely have available a lot for the first year students, is clubs. Like tons and tons of clubs. So the next question I would be asking is, “What clubs could this kid be part of? Is there something he could join? Is there a religious life at the campus that he might be willing to give it a try if that’s a community that’s readily available?” But there’s also like, super funny clubs, you know? There’s like, Quidditch clubs, and there’s gaming clubs, and there’s all sorts of things that there should be enough to meet most kids needs.

Reena Ninan
You know, I’m thinking about my own journey of freshman year at George Washington University, and I was thriving. This was the best–

Lisa Damour
I can just picture you, Reena. I would picture you like, hitting a college campus like, “Yeah!”

Reena Ninan
Totally. I just loved it. But I remember coming… You know, my parents lived in Florida, and for Thanksgiving, going to my uncles in New Jersey, and then sobbing because it hit me. Like it hit me: “Oh my gosh. My parents aren’t here for this moment.” What do you do? Like, even if your kid is doing well, how do you check in to… Like, they might be like, “Hey Mom, I’m fine, I’m good, I’m good, I’m thriving,” but they’re not. How do you know if you’re not having those daily check-ins?

Lisa Damour
That’s interesting, right? Okay, so this is a kid where the parent’s like, “I know where things are, and they’re not good, and I’m gonna try to offer support, and I’m gonna encourage him to join clubs. I’m gonna encourage him to reach out to the resources around.” But sometimes it happens that you hear nothing from your kid. You drop them off, and then it’s like, crickets. And you text them, and they’re like, “Hi.” How do you know if your kid’s okay? Well, I think most of the time, if you’re not hearing from them when they head off to college, that’s usually a good sign that they are just deeply involved in campus life. And you know, as much as we miss them, this is what we also want. I think it is perfectly fine in those moments for family members to send texts like, “Can you just let me know you’re alive? It sounds like you’re having a great time.I would love to hear from you.” I will also tell you, usually a kid in that dynamic is like, “I am separating. I am making my independence totally clear.” So that the hack I used was I would send photos of my younger daughter to my older daughter. I’d be like, isn’t she looking cute today? Look at this outfit. And that was something that she would engage around or respond around. And I’ve often heard families talk about sending updates about or from the family dog.

Reena Ninan
I love that.

Lisa Damour
That that is something that the young person can engage.

Reena Ninan
So should the parents make a visit? Should the kid come home? How do you gauge whether that’s a good thing? I know they have these parents weekends, usually in October. I was actually grateful my parents didn’t come because it kind of gave me a chance to kind of get into the semester. But what’s your take on that?

Lisa Damour
You know, it’s interesting, Reena, what you said about like, you were fine until you saw your parents, right? So, I mean, I think there really is that hazard. And I think that is something they probably want to talk about, right? Which is, I think there should be a vote of confidence about what are the supports, and can this kid make good use of them? And what gets in the way of that and trying to address that? But if he’s like, “No, just come. Just come. Let me see you,” there’s no perfect answer to this, but I think the answer is to say, “What if seeing us actually makes it that much harder to stay?” And really having that conversation about it. And it’s interesting what you say about Parents Weekend, right? Because, I mean, Parents Weekend, it’s not that fun, right? I mean, you kind of want to be integrated with your friends and–

Reena Ninan
But I think it’s fun for the parent, right? Because the parent is like, thrilled and gets to come back and see the kid. But I didn’t want that.

Lisa Damour
I didn’t really remember wanting it either. And I also think the best possible arrangement, and this is, of course, geographically, not an option for a lot of families. But one parent who I’m really close with, whose kids are older than mine, said that the best thing that worked ever was drive-bys where, if I could pop in for lunch. And so she happened to have a lot of work in the town where her kid was in school, so she would stop in just for lunch, and then see him again a few weeks later for breakfast or something. That for her kid worked a lot better, because you don’t want to spend all day with your parents, usually when you’re just getting rolling with college. So I also wonder for this family if that’s maybe a possibility, maybe then instead of coming for a long visit, like, “Why don’t we have lunch? We have lunch together,” and seeing if that feels supportive, but doesn’t open up the floodgates of feeling that he can’t stay.

Reena Ninan
That’s a great idea. So then the kid doesn’t feel like all weekend long he’s got to be tethered to the parents and kind of do their thing, and he can come and go.

Reena Ninan
You know, this concept, it feels like preschool all over again, where you drop your kid off, and the second they see you back again, they’re just bawling, but they were fine until they saw you. What is happening in the brain when that happens even at college?

Lisa Damour
Here’s my best answer: I don’t think this is quite it, but I think there’s always a good thing to remember: Whenever we’re around our parents, we regress. Okay, as someone who’s about to be 55, whenever I’m around my parents, I regress.

Reena Ninan
So true. Absolutely.

Lisa Damour
Like, that old pattern. So I think there is probably some version of that where you’re like, “I’m an amazing independent college student– There’s my mommy!” I think that that can happen for sure.

Reena Ninan
This sounds like the college version of “Inside Out 3.”

Lisa Damour
Riley goes to college. But I think the thing that’s really important here is: it’s natural to miss your family, to long for your parents, to be uneasy in a new setting. I think the more that we can just normalize that like, “Well, of course this is scary. You gave up everything you knew. You’re starting with something fresh.” To not treat the feelings themselves or the intense distress as inherently problematic. I think that, on its own, could do some good. Because I think kids feel like, “I should be able to be really happy here,” or, “Everybody else seems to be really happy here.” I think there’s a lot of kids putting on a good face at college. Wherever a kid is on the continuum of, “Gosh, I miss home,” or “Sometimes I think about coming home,” or, “I want to come home,” a pretty reliable first step is to be like, “Well, of course you do. We love you. You love us. That doesn’t mean you can’t do this. That doesn’t mean that college isn’t the right thing for you. That doesn’t mean you’re not ready. But that can live side by side with wanting to be home and missing your bed and missing your dog, and missing us.”

Reena Ninan
I want to ask you about the younger brother. What should parents keep in mind about the siblings that are left behind?

Lisa Damour
Oh my gosh, like this… We should do an entire episode on siblings whose older sibs go to college. And maybe we’ll do it when the time comes in your family, because it’s a really powerful moment. Kids have a lot of mixed feelings, and I remember one family telling me years ago that they had been so focused on dropping their kid off at college and how they were gonna feel, and then they turned around and their kids were in this, like, death grip hug. The older sibling and the younger sibling were holding each other and sobbing. And they were like, “We didn’t even think about that.”

Reena Ninan
Right!

Lisa Damour
“Until the moment, we hadn’t even thought about that.” So I think that it’s really important to find ways for those kids to stay connected. I will tell you, Reena, that my younger daughter was a sixth grader when my older daughter went to college, and we got her a cell phone at that point, which is incredibly young even in our community. It didn’t have a browser, didn’t have any social media apps, but she needed a texting channel to be in touch with her sister.

Reena Ninan
Because they’re so close.

Lisa Damour
They’re so close. Even though they’re seven years apart, they’re so close. I think she was sixth grade. I’m sure I’ll have to check my math, but she was younger than we would have normally given a kid a cell phone, but it worked really well. And then they could maintain their relationship, which is a lot of sending memes back and forth, but that’s how they were staying connected. So, account for that. And so if there’s a younger sibling, maybe even access to an iPad where they can text with the older sibling can make a really big difference.

Reena Ninan
My cousin had a baby, and their dog went into an absolute depression when the baby arrived. It had to be medicated. And it just got me thinking, like, you don’t realize as you, as a parent, are going through some life changes, of the impacts of the other members of your household, especially your younger children.

Lisa Damour
100%. It’s powerful. But this kid is also getting a little overwhelmed by his brother.

Reena Ninan
Yes.

Lisa Damour
And that happens where this boy from college is reaching out, reaching out, and the parents are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but the younger sib is, too. What’s good is the younger brother has led on to the family that the older brother is asking a lot, and so they can support the younger brother and saying, “Look, it’s not your job to make it okay for him. And if he’s really starting to wear on you, or if you’re feeling overwhelmed, let us know, and we’ll step in and up our support for him. But you’re not responsible for your brother at college.” I think is an important thing.

Reena Ninan
Is any of this preventable? Like, is there anything you can talk about, discuss so when the time comes, or even as you’re going through it, it might make it a little easier?

Lisa Damour
I think there is value in kids having gone away before, even if it’s sleepovers. Families who have the resources that can afford camp, they often find that that helps with building that sense of, “I can do this, I can be away.” If there’s real anxiety that a kid can’t do this, I think it’s okay to maybe have them stay a little closer to home for college. You don’t have to go very far away. A lot of kids in many communities have colleges nearby. I think we just need to really understand: Nowhere is it written that every kid is suddenly magically ready for college upon high school graduation. And it’s so much pressure at these times to do it the way other people are doing it, or what seems like the right way to do it in the community. You know your kid. If they need a year where they stay at home and work before they go to college, if they go to a college nearby, those are all wonderful, wonderful options, and people shouldn’t have any anxiety about exercising them.

Reena Ninan
Well, let me ask you this: How do you know when your kid is ready to go away for college?

Lisa Damour
Oof. Okay, big one? They see caring for themselves as their responsibility. That is the number one. They can do school, they’ve graduated from high school. The big distinction on college is: they understand they’re responsible for their own care, and you can trust them to take care of their own care. So how can I tell that? Well, usually the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So if your kid is buck wild the summer before college and coming home drunk and you don’t feel that they are safe or keep themselves safe, I would not be in a huge rush to send that kid to college. If, however, your kid has a very good track record of making good decisions, keeping themselves safe, taking responsibility for their care? That’s as ready as they’re going to be.

Reena Ninan
I just think so much has changed year from year since we started this podcast in 2020, at the start of Covid, really. And to hear you say at the beginning of this podcast that you’re seeing more people staying closer to home and that connection to family because we were all together for so long… What do you want parents to keep in mind as they’re thinking about the college process, going through it, or just unsure of where to go?

Lisa Damour
You know, I think there’s no one right way. There’s no one right way. The more that you can just tune into the kids you have and what they want and what you as a family are ready to support, can afford to support. Just tune into yourself, right? I think we’ve got wonderful content about college, and we’re gonna keep adding it so much. What happens in the college process is that everybody starts looking around at what everybody else is doing. No. I mean, the beautiful thing is that we’ve got so many options for colleges in this country and so many ways to get a higher education, if you want it. Make good use of that.

Reena Ninan
Why is it I’m so emotional when we talk about kids going off to college? Like, a tear streaming down my cheek as we’re talking about all this, truly. Because I’m four years away from it, but my heart breaks. I don’t know what… I don’t think it’s trauma, but there’s something that I feel so… I loved my college years. I wish that at 50 you can go back. Maybe that’s a new business idea that I should–

Lisa Damour
I know. Reena, when my older daughter was looking at colleges, I was like, “I’m applying to Emory!” We went to the virtual thing. I was like, “Oh my gosh, Emory looks amazing. Will they take me now?”

Lisa Damour
But, you know, Reena, there’s something else in this letter I want to– Before we wrap up, I want to think about, which is: Should the kid come home? Should they pull the plug on this?

Reena Ninan
Like, come home for good?

Lisa Damour
Yeah, just like, call it, and then restart at some future point. Sometimes, that’s the right call, too. I think you should do a whole bunch of stuff before that. I think you should make really good use of all of the options at the university. And there are many wonderful resources at the university, but I have also seen kids where they’re like, “You know what? This was not the right thing this year,” and they leave before they fail out, or before things go badly, and they leave with a clean record, and they often leave with an open door to return to that college the following year. That is also an okay outcome. It does not have to be that this kid toughs it out and is miserable.

Reena Ninan
It’s good for you to say that, because I think you’re giving permission to parents who might feel like the only option is you’ve got to force them to stay and not get out.

Lisa Damour
Nope, nope. I remember a guy a year in my cohort who left after two or three weeks and came back and started again the next year, behind us. And at the time, I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I myself could not imagine doing that. In retrospect, I’m like, “That kid was so smart and so brave, and they made such a good call.” So there are lots of ways to do this. There are lots of ways to do this.

Reena Ninan
I love that. And anyone out there who wants to create a college for parents over 50? [Laughter] Maybe it’s just a semester, if we’re being realistic, but somebody comes in and you’ve got a meal plan, just swipe–

Lisa Damour
God, fantastic, fantastic.

Reena Ninan
Go to the classes you want, too.

Lisa Damour
Exactly, hang out with your friends. Read your book on the quad. Okay, Reena, we gotta do it. We gotta do it.

Reena Ninan
Somebody out there, call us. We’ve got business opportunity

Lisa Damour
“Middle Age U.” [Laughter]

Reena Ninan
Lisa, thank you so much. This is such a sensitive and emotional, and I think it’s a massive life change, not just for the child, but for everybody in the family. So appreciate you walking us through this at this time.

Lisa Damour
You’re welcome. I love thinking about it.

Reena Ninan
So what do you have for us for Parenting to Go?

Lisa Damour
This is something I just think about all the time now: It’s all about coping. Distress is happening. Distress is a done deal. Going to college is super stressful. Everything changes. The fact that this kid is stressed, the fact that any kid is stressed by it is to be expected. Nobody should get too anxious about the fact that it is uncomfortable to go to college, or to just do whatever you’re doing after high school that wasn’t high school. It’s all about coping. It’s all about coping. The big divide is, are kids using healthy coping? Are they calling home and saying they’re sad? Are they finding friends? Are they going to the gym and working out? Or are they using unhealthy coping? Are they getting super drunk? Are they making dumb mistakes? That is the divide. Don’t sweat the distress. Focus on the coping.

Reena Ninan
Don’t sweat the distress. Focus on the coping. I think that should be our bumper sticker. I love that. I’d buy that bumper sticker. I’ll see you next week.

Lisa Damour
I’ll see you next week.