Most look at college as a time to grow up. To make your own decisions. To become your own person. To do your own laundry.
Basically, it’s a time to take whatever you weren’t doing in high school and make it part of your daily routine. And whatever you did do in high school now gets categorized as ‘child’s play.’ This includes, but is not limited to, lunchroom table angst, dress code woes, and hanging out with your family…right?
See, if you’re lucky enough to have a good relationship with your family, that’s not something you should let fade away just because you want to be more adult. Here’s a secret. Adults have parents, too.
So wait, you can enjoy your parents company and still go on to lead a normal, independent lifestyle? Absolutely! In fact, you might even become, dare I say, friends with them.
Although this time, you can approach it differently.
Invite them into your world
Hopefully, you participate in some sort of college extracurricular. Whether it’s Greek life, a club, or a sports organization, they usually have events that welcome the public. Even some classes have open house showcases at the end of the semester.
If you have any of the above happening, it’s a perfect time to close that gap between your life growing up and your new life in college. So invite your parents to whatever you have coming up. If it’s big enough, they might even come in from out of town for the occasion.
Besides, just showing them what you’ve been up to, it’ll show them who you’re becoming.
Go home for a visit
Some people can’t wait to leave the nest, and others still see it as ‘home’ even years after they’ve moved out.
But if you’re close enough to do so, there’s nothing wrong with paying it a visit. As people, we like that sense of home, and whether or not you still consider it yours, it was at some point.
So go back every once and a while, visit your family and old haunts. There’s something rewarding about returning to your roots as a new person.
Have dinner with them
If you live within a reasonable distance, you can offer to meet your parents at a restaurant. Or, if you’d rather, you could even head to their house and prepare something home cooked.
Either way, it’s worth it for the sake of catching up, and sometimes, that’s best done the way you did it back in high school. At the dinner table.
This is also a good option if you’re set on asserting your independence. You could be the one to cook, or to grab the check.
Plan a trip with them
It seems like everyone always spends their school breaks at exotic locations full of nightlife. But you should never feel strange if you choose to spend this time with your family.
And what better way to do it then going on a trip? Most families tend to travel the same way, no matter their age. So that means, for better or worse, you’ll time warp back to your high school days.
It might drive you crazy after a while, but it can still be wonderfully nostalgic.
Call them
Your entire college life doesn’t have to be a secret from your parents. Certainly, as you grow older and older, you’re going to run into more things you don’t want to share with them. But the same can be said for anybody. No one expects you to describe your partying escapades with an acquaintance, yet you can still find plenty to talk about.
Even if you don’t bring up every detail about your life, you can still enjoy a nice phone conversation. It might contain a lot of, “So what are you up to?” but there’s nothing wrong with that.
If you don’t do this often, you might be surprised at the insight your parents might offer into particularly complicated situations.
Added bonus: you can make this one work whether your parents live across town or across the country.
At the end of the day, there is a difference between never growing up, and growing up to have a healthy appreciation with your roots. Ultimately, you’ll have a different kind of relationship with your parents.
Unless you still let them make all of your decisions or you feel like you can’t function without their input, you’re probably fine. Which means you can move on to that next stage of spending time with your family as companions rather than as a dependent.