Curveballs and missteps are inevitable when you’re making a major life transition—which is why your student needs a game plan for handling them. Whether it’s discovering that a course they had thought they would love isn’t quite what they had expected or watching a roommate morph overnight from mildly quirky to downright annoying, your student will benefit from some behind-the-scenes support in resolving these difficulties. Here’s how to help.
Express your confidence in your student’s ability to weather life’s storms.
Your student needs to know that you have faith in their ability to come up with workable solutions. You can convey your confidence by resisting the temptation to jump in and solve their problems for them—by giving them the opportunity to experience the satisfaction that comes from knowing they’ve been able to work through a tough solution on their own.
Help your student to identify possible solutions.
Give your student the chance to talk through potential solutions with you. If they’re not quite sure how to go about resolving a particular problem, encourage them to start out by envisioning an ideal solution. Then, once they have a clear picture in their head of what would help to make the situation better, they can start figuring out what it would take to put that particular solution in place.
Encourage your student to seek support when needed.
Remind them that reaching out for help is a sign of strength and that they don’t have to solve all of their problems on their own. Then do your best to point them in the direction of other resources that might be helpful to them in resolving the problem. Maybe they could make an appointment with their academic advisor or talk things through with their residence don. Or maybe they would benefit from tapping into one of our other on-campus services and supports.
Encourage your student to take action sooner rather than later.
Problems have a tendency to snowball over time. Your student will find it easier to face tough problems head-on if they understands that making mistakes is part of learning. If we push ourselves to try new things, we’re going to take the odd tumble—and that’s okay. What matters is that we develop the ability to deal with them: to recover quickly and to adapt to and learn from life’s challenges.