When college kids visit home

Harry the advice writer in 2009

In November 2009, Harry (then 88) emailed a teenage cousin about a common situation: when college kids come home for a break. If there’s a lesson to share for the greater good of parent-child communication – and I believe there is – then he would have been fine with posting this. I hope his advice ended up helping the recipient of this email – and might help others, too.



It’s a funny thing, but it’s also a natural thing. When you’re at school, away from home, you get a little homesick and you can’t wait to get home for a visit. But when you’re home, after just a day or two, you just can’t wait to get back to school. There are several reasons for this, but, I’ll just give you a few. First, when you get home, you look upon it as a chance to see your family, yes, but that’s really a minor consideration. The major consideration for you is that it’s a chance to see your friends, to get together with them and go out and have fun without the pressure of school work to weigh you down. 

Your parents, on the other hand, look upon your visit as a chance to get together with you, to talk to you, to find out how you’re doing in school, to make sure that you’re eating well and taking care of yourself. They miss you far more than you miss them, but they don’t know how to tell you that. So … when you go out and spend more time with your friends than you do with your family, they resent it. After all, they’re the ones who are working hard to send you to school, and, in their view, you don’t seem to fully appreciate all they are doing for you. So ... you have to understand, there’s some tension there, and sometimes the self-control snaps and harsh words get said, especially by mothers and daughters. In some cases, mothers are under special pressure and strain because they are concerned with the health of their own parents.

What is happening, you see, is that the strings that tie a child to home and parents are beginning to fray, and the parents are sensing that their children are beginning to drift away, and it scares them, though they haven’t yet put this thought into words or actually confronted it squarely. So they fight it by demanding more control over the child. At the same time, the child, subconsciously, is savoring the taste of freedom from parental control while away at school and wants to extend that same freedom to the home environment and chafes at the lack of it, feeling that the parents just won’t let go.

Now, here’s the secret that children and parents just can’t see. If I point it out to you, I’m counting on you being mature enough to recognize this. Here’s what’s happening, too. There is a subtle shift in relationships slowly developing here in which the child is transitioning into an adult and the parents are only dimly aware of it and reluctant to accept it, though deep down they know it’s inevitable. Parents will always treat their children as children, even when they are married with children of their own. Children don’t remember, but parents do, how they held the kids in their arms and sang to them and diapered them and bathed them and comforted them when they got sick, and taught them to read and to ride a bike and to swim and to skate and to use the silverware and to eat and drink – in short, raise them from squealing infants to the person they are today.

So that kid will always be their baby. And this is the time when that baby – you – have to be understanding and, indeed, have to be more adult than your parents, in convincing them that you are in fact a grown up, responsible adult. 

How do you do that? By sitting down with them and talking to them and convincing them that you are taking care of yourself and are aware of the pitfalls and dangers confronting young people, and you are not going to do anything foolish; you just want to spend a little time with your friends, but you love your parents and really do appreciate all they have done and are continuing to do for you. 

You have four years of school ahead of you, and your visits home will get increasingly difficult each year unless you have that talk with your folks and convince them that you really are growing up into adulthood. If you follow the pattern, you see, after you graduate and get a job and go to work and start earning money, you will most likely move into your own apartment, maybe with one or two roommates at first, but eventually by yourself. The thing is, you are already in the beginning stages of no longer living at home with your parents, and believe me, parents don’t like that idea at all. So they fight it, unconsciously maybe, but they fight it by trying very hard to exert the same controls they’ve always imposed all your life.  

My guess is that you have already figured all this out for yourself, though you just haven’t put it into words like I’m doing now.

Copyright 2016
Elaine Blackman

The art of listening and consoling

Long known for having a sympathetic ear, Harry often encouraged and consoled his employees at the office about personal matters, as well as their work. He might have been doing a lot of that around the time my mom asked him if he had any advice for me before I went out on my first "date" in junior high, maybe 1965. "Be a good listener," he said. I found the following excerpt in a letter in Harry's computer files. 

Harry gave advice, but more than that, he listened. This 
must be the 1970's (notice the wide tie).

In the government, in my job, every summer for about 25 or 30 years, I had summer interns working for me, young people we hired for the summer while they were in college. Some I had for only one or two summers. Some for three or four. Some I was able to hire full time – or temporarily – after they graduated. And a few who worked for me summers while in graduate school working on advanced degrees.

Throughout those years, I found myself supervising young men and women – boys and girls – between 18 and 25 generally. And, after a while it dawned on me that they looked upon me as a sort of substitute Big Daddy – or maybe an Old Dutch Uncle. Many of them confided in me – all kinds of problems from financial, to sexual, to addictions, to academic failures, to career goals, etc.

If they were getting advice from me, I was learning more from them. And, the most valuable thing I learned was how to listen. Listening, I have since discovered from conversations with experts, is the best therapy you can apply to troubled persons.


What about heartbreak?

I also found the following letter in which Harry consoled someone (not an employee) about a relationship. He obviously wrote it for one person, but if others may benefit, I believe it’s worth sharing.

I am keenly aware of how difficult it is to transmit knowledge and experience from one generation to another. In our case, separated by two generations, it is even more difficult. If you confide in your parents about your very personal love life (many young people don’t tell their parents anything), then you will have received words of wisdom from them by now. I do not have words of wisdom for you. I can only tell you how I feel and what my experience has been.

To begin, we are not all so lucky as to find that one person who was meant just for you, not in a lifetime of searching. We are not all so lucky as to recognize our soul-mate when first we meet. I was the luckiest of men when I realized in my teenage years that there was one person destined for me and I knew, even at that young age, that we would marry one day. We did, when I was 22 and she was 21, and it has now been 66 happy years.

But it doesn’t mean that I didn’t date other girls or she other boys. It is absolutely necessary that each young person, both male and female, meet and interact with members of the opposite sex before they can know for certain that any particular one is THE one. In that sense, you were only doing what comes naturally and you should feel no guilt about it. If he has not done the same thing, that would be unnatural. In any case, having strayed, so to speak, you are now in a better position to tell him that you realize that he is THE one for you. If he does not accept that, then he is the one with a problem, not you.

"I was the luckiest of men when I realized in my 
teenage years that there was one person destined for me."

Now, I am not so old that I can’t remember the anguish and the agony and despair that accompany a parting of the ways. Heartbreak is a phenomenon that everyone has experienced. You are not unique in that respect. But it’s also true that everyone who has experienced it has survived it. That may be small comfort for you, but how you survive it is up to you.

You have to keep an open mind and be receptive to new experiences, maybe even new romances. And be confident in the sure and certain knowledge that, if he is indeed THE one for you, he will find his way back to you. Believe it and sit tight and give him time to find his way. And know this, the male of our species is usually slower to learn than the female, slower to come to the realization of true love, and slower to recognize what he really wants.

I realize, of course, that it’s easy for me to say these things. What’s happening to you is not happening to me. I cannot feel what you are going through. But, I do have empathy and I do, I really do, know how you feel. But you will get through it, and emerge a stronger and more confident person, believe me.

Did Harry share an experience with you that helped you make a decision?