No blogging for a couple of days–we’re moving Daughter into college for her freshman year. Hope, anticipation, fear and trepidation are the overwhelming emotions of the day. I hope we’ve taught her well and given her all the tools she’ll need to be successful, both in school and further down the road.
Today and tomorrow there are events for parents and kids, then a final meal and the parents are graciously invited to go home and leave the kids to it. And that is the last time we’ll see Daughter 1.0. When we go back in a month for Parents’ Weekend, we’ll see Daughter 1.1 (or who knows, maybe Daughter 2.0 for all we know) for the first time.
Of course, we’ll be in touch via phone, email, video conferencing, texts and who knows how else during the interim. We’ve given her instructions that Mommy and Daddy would like a quick message each day just to let us know she’s OK. That’s our single nod to being “helicopter parents”. Of course, we’ve told her that she’s always welcome to call us for longer calls than a quick OK, but I’m under no illusions about how often that will happen–she’ll be busy with classes, new people and new experiences, as she should be.
For kids, college is about more than going to classes. As we’re discovering, somewhat to our distress, for parents it’s about a lot more than simply packing a kid off to school.
Edit, 2018: At the fairly strenuous suggestion of most of the RAs (Resident Assistants) at the school, we’re going to abort the “I’m OK” thing every day. They think it’s counterproductive, and since most of them have more experience at this than I do, I’m going to go with the advice of someone only slightly older than Daughter. I must be slipping….