Alex

What do you think makes transition into higher education so difficult? And do you notice any patterns with kids that struggle to make it okay?

Dale

 I think it really starts at home. I think the way that we’ve been raising kids, including myself, like my generation, whereas the college kids are a little older now, we have been too involved in our kids’ lives. We haven’t given them enough independence. And because of that, they don’t think of themselves as independent, functioning people. They are too reliant on us to give them advice, to do things for them. Call the teacher in high school because there’s a problem, arrange for the tutor instead of having the child do that. I think my advice would be for parents to gradually give their child more and more responsibility for themselves. One of them is when somebody learns how to drive a car, you don’t just hand them the keys and say go ahead. There’s months and months of preparation, and we’re not preparing our kids to do that, be on their own like that. 

Alex

So you sort of touched on it already. But are there any other thoughts that you had, I guess, on the unique challenges that college students face now because of the pandemic?

Dale

Well, I think they’re getting on campus already, feeling, as we said, burnt out and stressed, so they’re kind of starting at a deficit. It takes a lot more effort on their part to just feel okay, so it’s just a harder situation. I do think that one of the sophomores that I know that I worked with as freshmen, they’re pretty excited because they feel like now we can have more of a college experience. So I think they’re, in general, doing a little bit better than freshmen because they’re like, oh, wow, now I get to really see what college is like because it’s not going to be as bad as last year, right? Socially, definitely. I think they’ve missed a lot, but I think they’re excited about this year and hopeful that it will be a positive experience for them. 

Alex

What are some of the techniques that you have for students to cope with these sort of adversities, like take it, some of the wellness practices that you mentioned earlier. Is there anything that’s been sort of particularly successful in dealing with that pandemic fatigue that you’re talking about? 

Dale

Yeah, I actually think the key, I would say is the time management piece, which is also part of my success formula because I think what I’m trying to do with the time management is make them realize that they do have control. When you feel like everything is out of control like it is now, that’s a really bad feeling. So I want to give them as much control as I can so that they have structure, because there’s very little structure in college, as you know, especially compared to high school. So the time management piece really involves how to set up a schedule, how to stick to it, how to tweak it if it’s not working well. And it helps them get everything done so that they feel good about themselves, they can accomplish what they do every day. And all the kids who have really embraced time management and I use a physical planner, every child or student who has accepted that and done a good job at it has done amazingly well, has improved their grades, felt better, gotten more confidence. And then I have so many parents saying, I’ve been telling them for years to use a planner and they won’t do it. 

Alex

Well, you’re their parents. 

Dale

Yeah. If more parents could really understand that. It’s not that I’m telling them some rocket science information that the parent doesn’t know. It’s the coaching relationship. It’s trusting somebody else, not their parents. 

Alex

Yeah. What do you think is going to be different about this year? I guess this is more of a prediction question. You know, what are you anticipating for 21, 22? Yes, this school year. 

Dale

This is difficult, obviously, but I’ll throw out some thoughts. As long as the Delta variant, nothing dramatic happens along the lines of the Delta variant or other variants, I imagine that colleges are doing as much as they can to maintain some kind of social interaction and give kids more of a college experience. And they’re really working hard and, you know, most of them have vaccine mandates and mask wearing and all that. So I think a lot of the kids have gotten used to the mask. So it’s not like a novelty now, it’s just more accepted. So I think that as long as nothing dramatically happens differently, I see it being a much better year than last year. And I think along the lines of what we were talking about with parents giving their kids more independence, I really encourage parents not to like, if they are hearing about homesickness, don’t rush in to save their kids because that’s just going to perpetuate the problem. I think you have to give your kids some opportunity to struggle a little bit and they will get stronger. They’ll become more resilient. But if you’re always saving them, they’re not growing. 

Alex

Something that stuck out to me in the second section with Dale is what parents can do at home to prepare kids for the situations that they’re going to run into in college and to create more independence and autonomy. I think she’s right that there is far too much coddling. I guess that’s happened on a societal level. So letting go is key for parents, which is counterintuitive, but they’re not going to be independent if we don’t do that.