safety

March can be a cruel season. The alternating bleak vs beautiful weather, the vagaries of college basketball, and of course, the end of the college admissions cycle. Are you a parent still sweating it out to see if your child is offered the magical move off the Waitlist into the Admitted pool? Or are all the doors closed and your child is irrevocably heading to their dreaded "Safety"? 

Providing safety was once your highest calling as a parent. Safety! There was nothing more you wanted for them. But in this season, the word can become perverted. It can feel like a sickening awful fate worse than death. 

But here is a reality check. College admissions is a game. It is unfair, weighted heavily towards the privileged, and has scant little to do with the character and capacity of your particular child. That holds whether your child was admitted to their first choice, or to their "safety".  

And remember, your child applied to their safety for a reason. It was a good enough school to be on their list. Schools are interchangeable in so many ways and if the names on the sweatshirts paraded about campus were switched, would your child really experientially differentiate Ivy U from University of State school? Wouldn't both places feature bright talented kids, excellent committed professors, dorm life, parties/sports/extracurriculars/ a rich environment to make the developmental transition from kid to young adult? 

Why does the prestige factor matter so much? Is it about your kid, or you? You may say and it is probably somewhat true that elite universities can open more doors to their students, through the same network of privilege and connections that got many kids there in the first place. But is it also true that it is 100% entirely possible to be wildly successful, happy, fulfilled, and achieve one's goals and potential without four years at one of those places? Yes! Emphatically so.

My office is about equidistant from a "top tier" private university and a similarly "top tier" public university. I see students from both schools. They are far more similar than they are different. The ones that want one to get a top-notch education, are. The ones who are hard-workers and aspire to an ambitious, bright future are headed there. The ones from both schools who are too weighted down by anxiety, depression, eating disorders, executive function difficulties, or the state of the world, are not flourishing. There are bright shiny stars and lost souls at both places. 

Seeing your child sad is incredibly painful. They worked so hard in high school and it can feel crushing that they didn't get what they wanted and maybe even deserved. But isn't this a teachable moment? As one of the many times on the path of life that hard work and being a good person might not pay off, a moment that calls for resilience and perspective? 

It is  understandably easy to get caught up in the game as a parent - to catastrophize, compare, fret, and despair. But please, stop. It's not good for you, and it's really not good for them. Your young person is seeing your disappointment and upset. It can make them feel like THEY are a disappointment. If they have been chronically high achieving superstars up to now, this may be a shameful moment for them. They may be looking to you for reassurance that it's ok, that they are still superstars in your book, that you believe their "Safety" has exciting potential and just might work out. They need to feel that you are proud, hopeful, and believe in them. Let it be so.