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| Kitchen sink??? |
This weekend, thousands of parents will be taking their children off to university. My niece is one of those parents, and has been dreading the day since, well, probably forever! Letting go of our children is a very difficult but necessary part of parenting. When they are little, we force ourselves to leave them with grandparents or childminders, then pre-school, infant, junior, secondary schools, each time leaving them a bit further away or encouraging them to cycle, walk or catch the bus with friends. You hope that they will become increasingly independent as they move into apprenticeships or sixth form and then comes the day that they want to move away! And for many, that day is now.
Because of my great niece, I’ve been thinking about both when my daughter went to uni, and also back to when I went to college back in the - deep breath - seventies!
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| Ah, the trousers, the belts... |
Even in the time since I took my daughter for the first time, in 2004, things have changed considerably. We did have texting and a rudimentary form of messenger, and I could speak to her on her phone if I needed to. Except when she dropped it down the loo, but that is another story… When she moved into her first student digs, she had no idea who she would be sharing with, what they would be like or even where the accommodation was in relation to her college. Nowadays freshers have the chance to chat to their ‘roomies’ on Facebook or other social media and feel that they ‘know’ them before having to share a flat. They also know that, should they feel homesick, they can FaceTime their parents whenever they want.
However, my daughter did benefit, as do most students these days, from her parent stuffing the car full of just about everything she owned, as well as the obligatory saucepans, duvets and toilet brush and driving her down the A14 to Coventry to start her new adventure. This weekend, every other car on the road will be similarly stuffed, as excited freshers embark on the next chapter of their life while their parents determine not to cry, and try to ignore the knot in their stomach as they get closer to the moment that they have to leave to drive a much emptier car home. I had to do this homeward journey alone, as my stepson also started uni the same weekend, so my partner and I were driving a very similar cargo in opposite directions! And I cried! I was listening to Keane on the stereo - depressing at the best of times, and I still can’t hear some of their songs without a lump in my throat - and I cried.
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| Still makes me cry! |
All the way home to an empty house. And I still cried. I messaged my daughter to let her know I’d arrived home and got a reply - ‘Just making cowboy hats out of cardboard boxes, then we’re off to a party!’ She didn’t take long to settle in!
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| My room in 1974 - I thought it was so cool! |
I was talking to my brother about when we went away to college and he said, ‘I don’t know about you, but all I had was a train ticket and a suitcase.’ And he’s right. I didn’t have much more - my parents didn’t have a car so all I took to college was what I could fit into a trunk and send ahead by road and what I could carry on the train. Admittedly I was in catered accommodation, so didn’t need saucepans, but it was quite a logistical challenge! Just as well personal computers hadn't been invented then.
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| Still hiding in my loft - full of, and surrounded by detritus now! |
It wasn’t until I experienced a child leaving home for uni that I realised how difficult it must have been for my parents. They had to see me off at the station, knowing that the only way they could get in touch with me was by letter or by waiting for me to call them from a payphone. It honestly never occurred to me that they might have missed me, I was so wrapped up in my new life. If I wanted to talk to them, I had to collect my ten pence coins and queue for the phone box - in my final year I seems to spend lots of time crying down a phone in the middle of Liverpool. I don’t know why I was more homesick that year than others, but it must have been awful for my mum, feeling helpless while I snivelled.
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| Ah, the trousers, the cheesecloth smocks! |
The worst part of all of this is that, by the time I realised what it would have been like for her, I couldn’t talk to her about it - she had died four years before my daughter went to uni.
Being miles away from home in the days before the internet did have some benefits. My parents wrote to me every week and my siblings wrote to me too. It is a real shame that we seem to have lost the art of letter writing - those envelopes dropping onto the doormat each week meant so much, and I kept them for years. Re-reading them helped me in difficult times, reassuring me that I was subject to unconditional love. My dad even used to send me food parcels - chocolate, cheese and biscuits, packed in a shoe box and sent through the post. In your face Moonpig! And looking back, I’m sure we were more resilient and self-reliant for not being connected to the World through our phones - we even survived without pictures of cats!
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| Made my great niece a comfort sloth to take - who doesn't need a comfort sloth? |
So, if you are taking a child to uni, miss them but don’t stifle them with Facetime! Allow them to make some mistakes without driving to their aid, and write them the odd letter. One that they can re-read when they need to, one that catches them unawares because they weren’t expecting it. Maybe even send them a food parcel. My parents were amazing, and if it worked for them, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work for you.
And if you are a newbie student, study hard, have fun and keep your parents in the loop. You don’t have to tell them everything, although waiting until you urgently need them to deliver a new pc before you tell them you've had your lip pierced is maybe not such a good idea(You know who you are..), but letting them know you are fine is the least you can do - after all, you’ll need them at the end of the year to pick you up!
