November 2003

Parent to parent: Students find changes at home

By Mom Marion

My daughter is smiling broadly in every photo of freshman-year Thanksgiving, and it's not a wooden "photo smile." There she is with her arm on the shoulder of her aging Grandpa. There she is in a crowd of 18 family members around the dinner table. There she is curled up on the couch, supposedly sleeping, but that smile gives her away.

Truth is, however, that the vacation didn't start smoothly -- and it was my fault.

While our daughter was gone, we had switched our children's rooms, putting her back in her former bedroom, and giving the larger one to her brother because he still lived at home.

Just before she arrived, I -- arguably the least artistic family member -- made a welcome-home collage, which I hung on the closet door of her new bedroom. I bought flowers and placed them next to her bed. I did all this because I feared her reaction to the switched rooms.

Warnings from the past

I knew there might be trouble because, as a former teacher of freshman writing at UC Davis, I had read numerous essays about the first Thanksgiving vacation. Young people don't like to come home and find changes in their room. Although some of my students wrote about their romantic difficulties at Thanksgiving (also common) or their parents' reactions to new piercings and tattoos, dozens complained about what I came to think of as the Big Mistake.

Parents had reclaimed or altered the student's room, and the student didn't like it. If the room was needed for a sibling or a grandparent, the student tried to be understanding. On the other hand, if the parents had created a new darkroom or mini-gym, or taken over part of the room for storage or a cat box, the student was not amused.

One young woman wrote, "I thought that was cold." Another said, "It's like your parents are excited to have you leave, so they can have the room back."

"When you're sharing space in the dorm," explains senior Chelsea Robinette, "your room at home is your sanctuary."

Different students, different reactions

The altered room, clear evidence that the parents consider the student to have moved on, also jars freshmen because, early in the school year, they don't always feel they've got a good handle on their new life. Even what I viewed as an enlightened minor alteration, moving my daughter into her former room, went over badly, despite the collage and flowers.

And yet, I've hesitated to write about the Big Mistake in this newsletter. I hope it won't lead to dozens of parents tearing wallpaper off walls, moving furniture, or retraining the cat -- only to encounter a smiling student who says, "Oh, I wouldn't have minded."

Everyone reacts differently to change.

Even for families who leave the room the same, the eyes that come home to look at it are different. My daughter said the house looked small. The furniture was out of proportion. She stared at me as if something was a little wrong with my face.

Then came Thanksgiving, with a house full of relatives and the smell of warm turkey, and she smiled all day.

Exams awaited her, papers were due, her boyfriend seemed a little different, the holiday was short, and the room, the house, and the mom looked funny.

Still, she smiled all day.

This article, slightly revised, was first published in the November 2002 issue of the Aggie Family Pack newsletter.

Newspaper columnist Marion Franck is the mother of two college students, a freshman and a senior. She has worked with UC Davis students as a lecturer.

Top of page

Return to previous page