The Struggle is Real: How To Help Young Adults Adjust To Their First Year Of College

With a new school year quickly approaching, adjusting to the first year of college as a young adult can impact your mental health. It can feel impossible or overwhelming to prepare, even though the tools you need are already within you.

Getting college ready may mean that you bolster your independence and resilience before you begin your first year of college and shift from high school.

This doesn’t mean that you have to fill all the gaps in only a summer but taking time to get prepared can be helpful. One step at a time can ease anxiety and depression as you navigate new territory as a college student.

Personal responsibility is one of the key indicators that a young adult is ready to start anew in college, according to clinical psychologist and author of Adolescence: Psychotherapy And The Emergent Self, Mark McConville.

It may seem like an impossible feat to help a young adult gain personal responsibility when you may still be handling most of their daily tasks for them.

Now is the time to let go and let them make a mistake, succeed, or both. College life during their freshman year will have the same results, so it is better to help your college freshman prepare now.

Here are 5 ways to help a young adult gain personal responsibility before heading to college:

1. Encourage your young adult to make dinner for the family.

You can support your teen by modeling the process and allow them to guide the direction of the dinner. They can choose the recipe, purchase the ingredients with your support, and cook the meal.

Read More: “Helpful Tips For Making The Transition To College”

Resist making comments about what they are doing wrong and focus on all of the ways they are contributing to the family instead.

You can even help them prepare a budget as they shop for the ingredients.

By supporting them through this process, you can learn how they cope with stress and become a listening ear when they face a challenge. Your emotional regulation and theirs can support resilience.

2. Schedule at least 1 medical appointment with your young adult.

This doesn’t mean that you make the dentist appointment for them. This means that you lovingly guide your young adult to succeed in doing this task themselves.

When you model that physical health and mental health are important, they can better help themselves when you are not there.

This also supports your young adult or teen with prioritizing their health in their own life.

A loving way to guide rather than dictate is to come up with a script together of what you would say when calling to make an appointment.

3. Prompt your young adult to come up with a school supplies list.

It is not your job to gather everything for your teen before they go. Prompt your teen to go through all supplies that have been helpful to them so far in their schooling and make a list.

They can chat with their friends to help, and even their new roommate if they have that information.

The thing to remember is that there are many new students right now, and not one of them is alone. Once the list is made, have a conversation about why it was beneficial and how they can use it in the future or if they no longer need it.

They may not be thinking about shower shoes and a shower caddy for dorm living, so you can lovingly guide toward solutions with the list to help prepare them as a first year student who is starting college.

4. Avoid managing bedtimes and wake up calls.

Personal responsibility means that young adults manage their own sleep schedule. Learned helplessness can be used when teens don’t have confidence yet to build up their skills.

Read More: “5 Ways to Help Your Teen Become Self-Sufficient”

This means a parent or caregiver needs to step back and allow failure.

If your teen doesn’t wake up on time, they may have to feel the natural consequence. It can be difficult to witness but going away to college means that young adults will be fully responsible for getting to that 8:00am class without your help.

5. Guide your young adult to set up academic connections at their school.

Knowing who and what resources are at school can make all the difference. It can be scary to go away from home for the first time as a college kid, so building a network before you go is immensely supportive to mental and physical health.

If the school has a tutoring center, academic advising center, or mental health services, find out more information about it. This takes the shame out of getting help when it is needed and staying on top of academic performance.

You can offer insight, and the most important thing is to listen.

The goal is not to speak only to confirm how right you are in every situation but rather to let your loved one figure out how right they can be when they don’t have you by their side.

Life changes can be challenging for anyone including young people, and our therapists at Denver Metro Counseling can help. Whether you are a parent, young adult, teen, or something in between, our Denver therapists can hold space and help to guide you through this major adjustment.

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Written by: Randi Thackeray, MA
Clinically Reviewed and Edited by: Julie Reichenberger, MA, LPC, ACS, ACC