The Joys and Challenges of Opening Day
September 21, 2009
“Go PA, go PA, go PA go!” the Blue Key welcoming committee screams from the corner of Main Street and Chapel Avenue. “Honk if you love Andover!” signals a sign held by one of the spirited leaders who is about take on the responsibility of orienting a group of new students. Family vehicles brimming with duffle bags, backpacks, comforters, and desk lamps file past the crazed upperclassmen and honk with gusto. New students experience the first of many conflicting emotions of the day. Should they duck or wave? While they may feel a twinge of embarrassment by their parents’ enthusiastic toots of the horn, they stare out the windows in awe of their face-painted-tie-dyed-clad big brothers and sisters.
Opening day at school is full of anxiety and expectation. While it is wonderful to see the students we have come to know so well through the admission process, we all recognize the challenges of this particular day. Long drives, heavy lifting, and emotional goodbyes punctuate the schedule. Luckily everyone is so busy setting up their dorm rooms, registering, and attending meetings with administrators, house counselors, and advisors that there is little time to focus on the leave-taking at the end of the day. Still we can read the tense eyes and breathless voices of both students and their parents. This is going to be ok, right?
Yes, it is going to be ok, potentially great, but that does not necessarily mean that the transition will be easy. In my time at Andover, I have learned that there is no single path to making one’s home away from home. Many students jump in with both feet and seem ready for anything that comes their way. Some of these same students, who transitioned with barely a wobble all fall, will return to campus in January to experience their first bouts of homesickness. Other students who have a bumpier early transition to boarding school life use the opportunity to develop a strong support system at school and go from strength to strength as they make their way through their first year. Every student will feel an emotional pull between home and school.
Whenever these normal feelings arise, parents can help by conveying confidence in their child’s ability to manage through the difficult period. Although parents are going through their own emotional transition—in fact, it is not unusual for the parents’ feelings of loss to be more significant than their child’s—the best response to a tearful phone call is to remind the child why he chose Andover and how proud he will be of himself when he manages his way through this time. The inspiration of confidence is much more effective than jumping in the car and racing to campus to save the day.
One of the best pieces of advice that I can give to parents of high school students is to give their children the opportunity to save their own day. Giving our children the chance to develop independence is not easy for parents to do, as society conditions us to be there for our children’s each and every need. In fact, over-parenting can be detrimental to our children’s emotional growth and development. Children will develop true confidence not from succeeding without challenge but rather accomplishing a goal that they believed to be beyond their reach. Believe me, they know the difference. I identify these times for my own children as “big guy or gal moments.” This signals to them that their feelings are normal and they need to dig deep to figure things out for themselves. And, just as important, the term reminds me that as much as I might like to rescue them from their distress, I should not and, in reality, I probably cannot.
I, therefore, encourage parents of new boarding school students who are homesick or having a tough transition to stay calm, inspire confidence by allowing the child to employ or develop his own coping skills, and stay in touch with the house counselor. And for those parents who are having difficulty adjusting to life with a child away at school even though their children are fine, members of our psychological counseling staff await your call. They are here to help you so that you, in turn, can help your child help himself.
Remember, we are all in this together.