Having your kids leave the nest and go to college can create an onslaught of emotions, including happiness, excitement, fear, anxiety, and sadness. But in the meantime, you still have several weeks or months before it happens. Enjoy this time together!
Whether your 18-year-old is attending college down the road or they’re going to a university out of state, there’s something about sending your child off to school that feels definitive.
Yes, they’ll still come home for holiday breaks and potentially live with you during the summers, but things are changing. Your relationship with your child will evolve over the next several years – hopefully becoming even stronger – but it will be different. Embrace these next few weeks as an opportunity to spend more time together and help prepare for what the next few years have in store.
5 Ways to Spend More Time Together:
1. Take a vacation together.
The summer before your child goes off to school is the perfect time to take a vacation. There are a couple of options here:
Option 1: Plan a trip with the entire family. Whether it’s going to the beach, visiting the lake, taking a trip to Disney World, or planning a trip to a resort in the Bahamas, there’s something powerful about getting everyone together and spending time away from work, school, and responsibilities.
Option 2: Plan a one-on-one trip with your child – just the two of you. You can go camping, take a weekend trip somewhere, etc. The goal is to create space for the two of you to bond and share laughs. It’s also a great time to impart some last parenting nuggets and gauge how they’re feeling about all of the change that’s about to happen.
2. Get together with the grandparents.
If your child still has living grandparents, this is the perfect opportunity to get together with them. Because once they go off to school, it’s going to become increasingly difficult to squeeze in time for visits.
Grandparents can often have conversations you can’t have as a parent. If your child has a good relationship with their grandparents, they may be more open and transparent with what they’re feeling and thinking.
3. Enjoy summer evenings in the backyard.
There isn’t much better than a cool summer evening spent as a family together in the backyard. This is a great time to create the backyard of your dreams so that you can enjoy more of these moments. Designing an outdoor kitchen and creating some backyard living spaces with furniture, firepits, and yard games is a great investment that will last for years.
4. Teach them Some valuable skills.
The last few weeks before your child goes to college is a great time to help them brush up on valuable life skills. (Or it might even be necessary to teach them some life skills for the first time.) Examples include: cooking, doing laundry, changing a tire, checking bank account statements, etc.
5. Visit campus together.
Chances are, your child is extremely excited and anxious about going to school. They’re looking forward to the experience and can’t wait to get that first taste of independence.
Over the summer, you may want to schedule a trip to visit campus together. There doesn’t have to be any big agenda – just go have fun together! Walk around campus, buy some team gear at the bookstore, step into the library and have a look around, etc.
Rather than using this as a moment to teach and impart wisdom, just have fun with it. Dream a little with your child and embrace their excitement and anticipation for what’s to come. The more excited you are for them, the happier they’ll be.
Enjoy the Little Moments
You don’t always have to make spending time with your kids some “formal” bonding moment. In other words, you don’t have to plan something, put it on the calendar, and announce to your child that you’ll be using this time to bond before they leave for school. Forcing it like this can often be counterproductive.
The best way to spend time with your child before they leave for school is by being a present dad. If you’re working 60 hours a week, golfing with your friends on the weekends, and stressing over your own personal to-do list of house chores, it’ll be difficult to get quality time in.
The key is to make yourself available and to embrace the small, impromptu moments that arise. If you make time for these opportunities, you’ll get plenty of quality time together.
—
This content is made possible by Larry Alton.
Photo credit: Shutterstock