A couple of years ago, a mom reached out to us saying her eldest daughter was starting college in September. Her husband had recently been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Financially, thankfully, she would be OK. Her concern was getting her daughter off to school with a mentally sound start and the emotional support she needed.
We should mention that we run a Facebook Group called Grown and Flown Parents. We use the platform to connect parents of teens, college kids, and young adults, so they can talk about the challenges and joys of parenting kids who are no longer children.
For this mom’s particular request, we were at a loss. We have not lived through this incredibly sensitive situation personally, and had no professional expertise to offer her. Understandably, she didn’t want to jump into our community and talk about this most private and painful issue. Instead, we posted her question in our Group anonymously, and asked our members for help and support.
The answers came flooding in. Parents who had been in similar situations told her what helped their own kids. Parents who had recently been to college orientation told her what they had learned. We were grateful that the community could step in and provide assistance to this mom where we couldn’t. She was overwhelmed and uplifted by the support.
After seeing how successful an anonymous post could be, we let the Group know we were happy to do this for anyone. Requests have continued to roll in on subjects from anxiety and coming out, to disciplinary problems in school and everything in between.
When our kids are small, we have a built-in community. Whether we’re dropping off our children, picking them up, or standing on the sidelines, we’re constantly surrounded by other parents sharing our experiences. We’re also in contact with the experts in our kids’ lives, like their teachers or pediatricians. When your kid doesn’t sleep through the night or is a picky eater, it’s easy to find someone to talk it over with comfortably.
But when your teen is anxious and wants to drop out of college, when they have had a DUI, or have cheated in school, this is a harder set of problems, and suddenly you’re left without a community. Although we feel our kids’ pain acutely, as they move through their teen years and into college their problems are not ours to share. Their privacy is paramount. So even if your heart is breaking or if you are handling some of your toughest parenting challenges ever, you may have no one to talk with.
Parents of older kids had been overlooked. In our community, every day, many times a day, parents come to us with their most personal, private, and often scary parenting challenges. We share them with tens of thousands of other parents and experts who come together to help, and we see it make a difference in people’s lives daily. Parents share their concerns, joy, and experience with others walking the path.
Sometimes even the best advice isn’t enough, though. Certain realities require more tangible forms of support. One huge issue we see parents facing is the increasing expense of college. In fact, the Retail Federation tells us that the average family now spends nearly $1,000 a year per student on necessities beyond tuition and living expenses. For a family that’s already working to make ends meet, this can mean forgoing college altogether.
Recognizing that so many families deal with this financial hurdle, our members wanted to step in and help. At the urging of our community, we organized a mass donation of dorm supplies to The University of Texas at Austin’s Foundation Scholars Program. In our first year we supplied 225 first-generation freshmen at the university with every necessity they needed to move into their dorms: sheets, towels, pillows, laundry baskets, mattress toppers, and more. This is only the beginning of the tangible and impactful ways our community can mobilize to help others in meaningful ways.
Grown and Flown has come to not only be an online resource but a rallying force around issues that parents with older kids face day in and day out. These challenges are far too complex and consequential to not talk about. We’re here to help.
