How to Help Your Homesick College Freshman
“I want to go home” are five words a college parent dreads hearing, even though you wish your child could come home. Is your freshman normal for wanting to come home already or does she need to get help? Can you help her overcome her homesickness?
In the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Chris Thurber and Edward Walton define homesickness as, “distress and functional impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home and attachment objects such as parents.” In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Carl Pickhardt shares that homesickness is typical in young children but is also experienced by young adolescents as well.
Especially within the first month of college, your freshman may frequently call home to express feelings of loneliness or homesickness. How can you help? Discover 6 things you can do to help your freshman cope with homesickness!
1. Call your freshman less.
You have the capability to call your freshman throughout the day, even multiple times a day. Checking in throughout the day not only gives you peace of mind but helps your freshman to know that she is not forgotten. Do frequent texts or phone calls help your struggling freshman stay in college?
Sharon Greenthal, writer for Verywell, encourages parents to consider no news from your freshman as good news. Refuse to assume the worst has happened when you don’t hear from your freshman for a few days. The reality is that she has probably lost track of the last time she called you. With various new responsibilities, she is having a hard enough time remembering to eat meals, much less call home.
Calling your college freshman once a week or even a few times a week is perfectly fine. However, be cautious that your calls do not stir up homesickness in your freshman. Sometimes less contact (within reason) can be the nudge your freshman needs to make new friends at college.
2. Send care packages.
Care packages are a reminder that you are thinking of your freshman. While you can’t send a box of goodies every few weeks, sending small tokens of your love throughout the semester can be what your freshman needs to keep going.
In my post “Putting the Care in Care Packages,” I share four reasons your freshman appreciates care packages:
Your freshman loves free things. Your freshman enjoys saving some money. Receiving items from you means that she doesn’t have to buy them later.
Your freshman likes seeing you care. She knows you care for her, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish you would demonstrate it through thoughtful actions.
Your freshman enjoys not having to shop. Especially if your freshman doesn’t have a vehicle or regular access to transportation, she appreciates that you stock her up on the items she needs.
Your freshman receives a boost of energy. Your thoughtful care package gives her a pep in her step, because she knows you care about her and are thinking about her. Additionally, this package gives her something to look forward to looking through later in the day.
Three times throughout the semester are especially good to send these reminders of your love: about one month after classes start, around midterms, and around finals week. Likely your homesick freshman is in one of these stages. Consider sending some reminder of your care to encourage your homesick and weary college freshman!
3. Listen well.
Listening well is a skill, but listening well as a parent may seem impossible. You want to insert advice, share a personal experience, or correct her incorrect thinking. How can you listen well when your freshman constantly seems discouraged?
In my post, “How to Listen to Your College Freshman,” I share three ways you can truly listen to your freshman:
Absorb information. Listen for the message your child is trying to share, even if she is not doing a very good job of explaining herself.
Gather meaning. You often have to “read in between the lines” when your freshman calls, because her perspective may not always be accurate to the actual situation.
Respond tactfully. Often the best way to respond to your exhausted, frustrated, and lonely freshman is with a question. Questions like “what would you do differently next time?” or “what do you think you should do?” can help get the wheels turning so that your freshman learns to solve her own problem.
4. Acknowledge your freshman’s feelings and offer support.
Dr Carl Pickhardt explains the concept of “the curse of the happy high school,” where a high school student experienced success academically, socially, and maybe even romantically in high school. When transitioning to college, this student soon finds she is no one special even if she works hard to stand out. “Growing up,” Prickhardt explains, “requires giving up, and one of the hardest parts of home life to give up is letting go the easy company and constant availability of high school friends” and comforts of home life.
Dr. Pickhardt also shares that “although the pain of homesickness is mostly emotional, it can have bodily expression too – with suffering from tension, nausea, sleeplessness, and general feelings of bodily un-wellness.” Her homesickness affects her in every way. Recognizing her homesickness will go a long way when helping her work through it.
Beyond recognizing her feelings, do your best to provide her with support. Providing support in this time of transition will push your child towards owning her independence. Encouraging her decision-making and problem-solving will go a long way as she develops confidence as an independent entity.
5. Encourage your freshman to stay at school.
If your child lives close to home, visiting home most weekends may be her default. Constantly visiting home, however, can prolong her feelings of homesickness. Encourage her instead to stay at college most weekends.
In my post “How Often Should College Freshman Go Home?” I share four ways visiting home too frequently negatively affects your freshman:
Your freshman fails to develop independence. Coming home too often causes your child to revert back to child-like dependence. Mom or dad pay for food and often make the food. Mom or dad does the laundry. Mom or dad pays for gasoline. Why wouldn’t your freshman want the conveniences and comforts of childhood?
Your freshman misspends valuable time and money. The weekends should be a time dedicated to studying and getting to know people at college. Instead, your freshman is spending much of her weekend doing the same things she did in high school, except for the more severe consequences she experiences the following week.
Your freshman struggles to develop college relationships. Stuck in a weird no man’s land, your freshman soon will find home no longer feels like home and college does not feel like home either. She finds that she doesn’t belong either place, because she isn’t truly engaged in either place. Rather than building relationships with her peers at college, she will feel more and more left out and alone.
Your freshman wrestles with navigating long-distance relationships. She needs to learn this skill for the future. If she doesn’t learn it now, she’ll only struggle with it later.
6. Encourage your freshman to adapt.
College is a place filled with unique opportunities, but your freshman won’t experience them if she never goes beyond her comfort zone. Urge your freshman to push beyond her discomfort and loneliness by getting plugged in on campus.
Developing interpersonal skills will help her far beyond college. Her freshman year is a wonderful time for her to figure out how to meet, talk, and connect with people. The longer she waits to develop these skills, the more out of place she’ll feel.
Encourage her to go to club meetings on campus. Encourage her to take a class outside of her major. Encourage her to meet another student on her hall. The more people she meets, the more likely she is to find a person with whom she connects.
Homesickness can impact your freshman emotionally, physically, socially, and academically. Help your freshman learn to adapt to college life by implementing these 6 things!
