Communication Expectations at College

Expecting Close Communication and Family Togetherness

Your child will feel additional stress if there is disagreement over how much you two should communicate. Certainly, just because your child has entered college, you don't expect to be cut off from information. Whether your child is living at home or in a dorm room, you expect to hear how he is doing, how his classes are going, what kind of grades he is getting, what friends he's making, how his professors are, and so on. But these perfectly natural expectations are notorious for causing tension between parents and their college-age children.

The college student is struggling to become autonomous and may not feel like communicating much or often. Some are just too busy to stay in touch. Others find that too much communication triggers loneliness and homesickness, and so they avoid it. And some say it pulls them back into the parent-child lectures and arguments they've grown out of. For whatever reason, it is quite common for college students to either intentionally or unintentionally put distance between themselves and their parents. Although this is their choice, they still feel the stress of parental complaints.

This disagreement over sharing one's self spills over into family togetherness time as well. Parents often tell me that because they are still supporting their child and consider her a member of the family, they naturally look forward to seeing her occasionally. The students I talk to don't always feel the same but do feel the guilt associated with this differing view.

Max confided to me that he was very excited about visiting his roommate's family over the Thanksgiving break, but had not yet told his parents about this plan. "They're going to be so angry that I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving," he admitted. "But it's a five-hour car ride from campus to my home, and Jim's house is only one hour away. But as long as my parents are paying the bills, there's no way I can make them understand that I'd rather not make the trip; they always try to guilt me into doing what they want." Max's plan was to spring this news on his parents at the last second and take off before they had a chance to make him change his plans. Obviously, he did, indeed, feel guilty.

Canceling visits home may be a coping mechanism to fight off homesickness, or it may be done in the rush of a self-centered life, but either way, it is always the cause of family tension that adds on more layers of daily tension.