How Parents Can Help With Post-High School Graduation Blues
Is it normal to feel depressed after graduating?
I don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life.
What if I fail college?
Are my parents disappointed I didn’t make it into an Ivy League school?
Post-graduation, your high school graduate may seem off. They may isolate themselves or become unusually agitated. What’s wrong?
Remembering back to your own post-graduation feelings may be almost impossible. (It is for me too.) It’s hard to empathize with someone experiencing feelings so distant from you.
Though you likely can’t recall this time of life, you can work to build trust and help your freshman work through significant feelings of loss and sadness.
Below are four different steps you can take to help with post-high-school-graduation blues:
Acknowledge the path behind and ahead.
Communicate your expectations.
Watch for co-ruminating.
Employ ORID.
Acknowledge the path behind and ahead.
After graduating, your child is likely to experience both excitement and sadness. This is normal. Why do they feel these bittersweet feelings? They’re losing many important things in their life:
Life-long friendships
Social structures they understand
Mentors/teachers they’ve built relationships with
Social groups they’ve bonded with (e.g. a baseball team, a Spanish club, etc.)
Daily structure
On one hand, they’re ready to move on from the restrictions of childhood. They’re ready to have more freedom, to spread their wings.
On the other hand, they may feel lost, terrified, and bewildered about what this next stage of life should look like. They’re afraid of making life-altering mistakes--especially ones they’re not even sure exist.
The unknowns are significant. They don’t know what the years ahead hold. They’ve heard college will be the “best” time of their life, but what if that isn’t true for them? What then?
Communicate your expectations.
As is true with most relationships, failing to communicate expectations can cause tension, conflict, and unnecessary drama. This is especially true of your relationship with your high school grad.
They may assume you expect accomplishments or behavior from them that you had no intention of implying. This can lead to strain in your parent-child relationship.
While you can’t read your child’s mind, you can take some preemptive steps to head off some common areas of stress like these:
Their college choice: Your child may anticipate you want them to go to a specific school or go to a specific type of school (i.e. in state, out of state, community, etc.). They may feel unstated pressure that they’ve let you down or that you are trying to control their future. Having a simple discussion about what their plans are and how you can help can alleviate much of this tension.
Their college major: Without overlapping too much with past posts, choice of college major can cause a lot of tension between you and your freshman. Your well-meaning words can actually add to the stress your already stressed out high school grad feels. Read more on this topic in these 3 posts: “How Can I Help My Child Choose a College Major?,” “3 Bad Pieces of Advice Parents Give About College Majors,” and “Doing Before Loving.”
Their summer plans: This summer is unlike any summer your freshman will experience again. It can be a very good time in their lives or a very miserable time in their lives. Helping them chart this plan can make all the difference. Read more about how to help this summer in these posts: “13 Freshmen Orientation Questions Parents Should Ask,” “Being, Not Doing: How to Focus on What You Want Your High School Graduate to Become,” and “10 Things Your Graduate Should Know Before College.”
Watch for co-ruminating.
In an article for TIME magazine, Rachel Simmons identifies a communication style that parents often use with their newly-emancipated children, called co-rumination.
She states: “Co-rumination occurs when we dwell with our kids on their problems, worry about a problem’s causes, focus on a child’s negative feelings and egg each other on to keep talking.”
Instead of working to sooth the adolescent child, it can actually have the opposite effect. Simmons continues, this “repetitive talking about problems brings us closer, but it can also make us unhappy . . . It’s more about talking about challenges than taking action to address them.”
This is an easy go-to, because it gives one the feeling of helping to solve the problem without actually solving anything. In fact, Simmons shares how co-rumination can interfere with an adolescent’s problem-solving skills.
Co-ruminating can lead to negative emotional consequences. It doesn’t set up your child to know how to deal with challenges and can lead to depression and anxiety.
So what can you do to help without co-ruminating?
Talking about your child’s challenges or problems isn’t the problem. How you talk about your child’s challenges or problems is likely more of the problem.
Simmons shares this insightful thought: “To shift away from co-ruminating with your child, you’ll need to let go together of what you don’t (or can’t) know the answer to, and embrace what is in your control to change.”
Letting go is difficult. You want to have all the answers. You want to be able to confidently say, “It’ll all be okay,” but you can’t. Shifting away from circular co-ruminating habits will take time, but will lead to more helpful problem-solving tactics, like the one explained below...
Employ ORID.
Redirecting circular, indecisive conversations requires tact and care. Using the four-step ORID process makes this redirection easier.
O - Objective
Ask your child what they already know to be true. “What happened?” kinds of questions focus on the standard who, what, when, where, how kinds of questions without exploring any of the “why.”
This process can help your child focus on evidence-based realities, and can help them avoid making assumptions or assertions that may or may not be fully accurate.
R - Reflective
Ask your child how they felt as a result. Acknowledging and expressing some frustration with you can be a safe and healthy way for your child to process their emotions.
I - Interpretive
Ask your child what will be the impact of that event. What will be the consequences for your child? How will that situation impact their present and future?
This can help your child to think through the action-consequence realities. (This is especially helpful for a child that assumes the worst or for a child that rarely thinks through consequences of their actions.)
D - Decisional
Ask your child what they can do. What is the next step? What are their options? What could lead to the best possible outcome?
Thinking through their possible options can help a trapped young adult feel like they have control over their response. It can help them see their actions have the possibility of drastically altering the future.
This summer is the perfect opportunity to help your high school grad adjust to life away from home. Helping them learn to solve their own problems is a big first step in that direction. Before they even step on campus, you can help them be more well-equipped and feel more confident by using these four steps.
