Your Kids Will Find Their Own Path — Relax and Let Them Be
“Support your children in finding their own path — even if turns out to be different than what you had in mind,” says this therapist.
The eighteen-year-old young woman hunched forward on the sofa in my office. Tears spilled down her cheeks, leaving muddy streaks of mascara beneath both eyes. “I can’t disappoint my parents no matter how much I hate it here,” she said. “I’m stuck at this school. This is what they planned forever and they’ve already paid the tuition.”
I leaned forward. “So you’re telling me that even though you’ve been thinking of suicide you’re not going to let your mom and dad know how miserable you are? You’d rather die than disappoint them?”
She stared at the floor and nodded. “If I go home now they’ll think I’m a loser. This is all they’ve wanted for me. This college. This major. I’m supposed to become an engineer but I don’t think it’s what I want. I don’t know what I want. I might as well be dead.”
She had been referred to me by the university counseling department after she had stopped attending classes and disclosed to her best friends that she was thinking of suicide.
