Less than thankful .... around Thanksgiving
“This Thanksgiving is going to be horrible,” my student employee said as she flung her backpack onto the desk.
She was usually quiet and pretty reserved, but today she seemed agitated. “What happened?” I asked.
Even though she’d grown up just a couple hours away from campus, she hadn’t gone home since the start of the semester. So, as a first-year student, this was going to be her first time home, seeing her parents and siblings, since she moved to college. She had two younger siblings in high school who were excited to see her. The problem? She told her parents that she wanted to come back for half of the break and then go on a weekend trip with her college friends for the other half.
They said no. But she wasn’t so sure her parents could say “no” to this.
“I’m an adult now,” she bemoaned, “and I don’t live under their roof. If I were going any other weekend, I wouldn’t have even brought it up to them.” It wasn’t the no itself, she said, but the fact that there was no conversation. They weren’t expressing how they felt about it and asking for a compromise. They interpreted her decision as a request for permission, and she was left feeling like a door had just been slammed in her face. She felt like she was back in high school and all of her newfound independence had been trampled.
A simple “no” had exploded into family conflict.
Her siblings were hurt that she didn’t want to be home longer. Her parents were angry that she even suggested a deviation from their usual plans. And she was annoyed that she was being treated like her other siblings, even though she was now in college.
What’s a family to do?
Situations like these are all too common. Students come back to their old bedrooms and their family system. Everything feels the same, but they are not the same. They have changed a lot in the last few months. And it is jarring for them, their parents, and their siblings, even in the healthiest and tightest-knit families. Conflict should be expected. Sometimes,it can be explosive.
In this scenario, it’s easy to see all sides. The college student is excited about her new friends and her independence. The parents are excited to have their student home and want to feel prioritized. The siblings feel left out and left behind.
While every conflict is different and family systems are extremely complicated, it can be helpful, as parents, to have a few key phrases ready to go when conflict bubbles up. The goal with these phrases isn’t to dismiss the conflict but to turn the temperature down, so that productive, relationship-building conversation can happen:
I’m really surprised / hurt / confused by this. Can I have a minute to process
If your young adult says something that catches you off guard or makes you feel hurt or angry, it’s helpful to start by acknowledging that. Using an “I feel” statement instead of a “you” statement can make the conversation less about accusing your young adult of something and more about you processing how the situation is making you feel.
Can you help me understand how you came to this decision?
Inviting your young adult to narrate their decision-making process can give you time to think, hear their perspective, and turn this toward a constructive conversation. If you ask this question, though, be ready to truly listen and hear what your young adult says (not just respond to what you think they could or should say).
Let’s revisit this conversation when everyone is feeling calmer.
The last one serves to pump the brakes when things get heated. If conflict starts to spiral, there is no harm in stepping away. Often, parents need to be the ones to model this behavior. And everyone can return later to have a conversation instead of a debate or argument. The key here is to actually return to the conversation with intentionality, instead of pretending like it never happened.
Conflict is common around the holidays. There is nothing wrong with you, your student, or your family if things aren’t as simple and sweet as you hoped or expected. But it doesn’t have to be explosive. Invite your young adult into dialogue and watch your relationship grow through the conflict!
