Lisa Endlich's Blog, page 429

8 Things to Remember on the Lonely Return to Your Empty Nest

We know this day is coming. We hope for it, work hard for it and yet…when it arrives, we can find ourselves wishing it away. For 18 years we prepare to take our kids to college. We cultivate their independence, encourage their achievements and sit alongside them through the roller coaster ride of college admissions.

But after the boxes are unpacked and twin bed neatly made, there is nothing more to do than say goodbye. Nothing more to do than take a deep breath, walk away, and return home to...

6 Reasons Why Moms Cry When They Leave Their Kids at College

This weekend we dropped off number two son at college. This is not my first rodeo so I was somewhat prepared for the flood of emotion that comes with this process. Despite the fact that I’ve been feeling weepy for the last week or two, the actual separation went surprisingly well, even though I did feel that familiar lump rise in my throat as we watched him walk away.

If we moms had to explain why we get misty-eyed when we leave kids at college, we’d say, or as I can only speak for myself, I...

After Her Son’s Scary Gap Year, College Drop Off Was a Relief

I stood there on the grass outside the auditorium where the Convocation had just finished. It was college drop off day and parents were still making their way out the doors and down the steps to the refreshment tables where I waited. Students streamed out the side doors of the auditorium like a school of minnows, a silvery blur in the dappled sunlight of late afternoon.

There were four hundred odd students and more than twice that number of parents and family members trying to find each other...

5 Not-So-Nice Wishes For Your College Freshman

Dear Parent of a soon-to-be college freshman, you have spent the last few months hearing family and friends bestow many good wishes upon your child as they embark on this new and exciting chapter of their life. Your graduating seniors have been told by countless adults that college will be some of their finest and most fun-filled years, and they’ve been wished the best of luck.I hope that your child has basked in all of this love and good will, and that they are truly optimistic about the yea...

When Graduating Seniors Want to Be Facebook Friends with Teachers

As a teacher, I have always had a hard and fast rule about social media connecting teachers and students: It is a bad idea. Every year students ask if we can be Facebook friends. Every year I say, “four years after you graduate, you can.”

The thought is that most of them will forget, and the ones who remember are the ones I truly want to stay in contact with. It was a sort of weeding out process about which I felt no qualms whatsoever. Over the years only a few have actually ended up connecti...

How to Parent in Our Age of Uncertainty

I spent all morningsetting up emergency contact information on my boys’ phonesandresearching the best tracking app to add to my 16-year old’s phone for his weekend at Lollapalooza, the outdoor music festival in Chicago.I also tried to show him a map of the venue and where I want him to head in case of an emergency but he’s not playing along with my plan.

Am I paranoid? Well, yeah.

Why wouldn’t I be? Every morning when I read the news there’s another story about an attack/bombing/shooting wh...

I Know, Mom: Recent College Grad Reflects on Fight to the Finish

I was nine years old on 9/11. A boy came running into my class talking about what he’d seen on the news and how cool it looked. I lived in Missouri so no one got sent home from school. The biggest indication I had that something was wrong was that I had to take a note home to my mom that said that Back to School Night was cancelled. I remember my mother telling me in the YMCA parking lot before my swimming lesson that something terrible had happened and that a lot of people were hurt. But as...

When a Daughter Leaves for College It’s Not the Same as a Son

Joy cannot exist without sorrow. Ghosts are the embodiment of both: joy from their memory, sorrow from their absence. Life is a constant balance between antipodes, which is why melancholy is such a good word: It describes the simultaneity of joy and grief.

All of these come into play when a child leaves for college, except the child is not, in this case, the ghost. Her childhood is. The joy comes from launching the baby bird. The sorrow hits the moment we watch her fly away.

I know. I’ve bee...

Why Should Kids Have All the Fun? I Want to Go to College, Too!

I don’t fully agree with George Bernard Shaw’s adage that “youth is wasted on the young,” but after taking my son, a rising high school senior, on a whirlwind tour of lovely, Northeastern liberal arts institutions of higher learning, I definitely believe that college is.

“What do you think of this place?” a dad from our Skidmore tour asked me as we kicked back on the front porch of the admissions office while our kids were inside trying to impress in their interviews.

I looked out at the re...

Is Campus Carry Now Part of the College Decision?

With 10 states allowing guns on college campuses, will campus carry be part of the college discussion at your dinner table?

Three years ago on a broiling hot day in August, I walked across the campus at the University of Texas in Austin with my high school daughter, a rising senior. We toured the school while I told her stories about the four years I spent there.

I pointed out buildings where I took my favorite History classes and the stadium where we watched Heisman Trophy winner Earl Campbe...