Home for the holidays: It’s not always peace on earth
When my friend Jen Yip returned to her parent's house in Calgary after completing her first semester of university in Vancouver, she found that her bedroom had been converted into an entertainment centre. “I wanted to go to sleep in my bed” Yip remarks, “instead I found a large screen TV, golf paraphernalia and hockey posters.” Her father had reclaimed her bedroom and transformed it into a shrine of manhood. There was not a bed in sight.
Jen frames the story in a positive light, earnestly explaining that it “signalled my independence” and was a “positive step into the future.” Now I won’t suggest Jen’s memory is a tad revisionist, but I do recall arriving at her house and finding her in a very impassioned conversation with her parents over the fate of her bedroom. She didn’t seemed too positive at the time.
Coming home last week, I was curious to see if my parents had conducted any secret renovations while I was away. However, I had no such excitement. My home was the same as I left it. My re-entry has been boringly smooth. I’ve even taken on chores, the first of which was to go outside and pick up a few weeks worth of dog poop. It's nice to be back.
I’m not quite sure which experience is more common, mine or Jennifer’s. There’s an article in the New York Times on the very subject of renovating your kid’s room while they’re in university. Google, the definitive authority on what’s important in the world, yields numerous websites proffering tips on how to reintegrate your freshman into the family. I never the knew the process was so complicated.
The moment university begins and parentally supervised development ends, parents and children drift in independent directions. The extent of that drift becomes apparent when everyone reconvenes at Christmas. Parents find their children maintaining the same habits they had in university: going to bed at odd hours, shirking household responsibilities and occasionally drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Children find their parents maintaining the same habits they had before university: nagging, curfew-setting and altogether not recognizing their flowering adulthood.
It takes time for both parties to adjust and come to terms with shifting realities. My parents and I have had a head start on this process. My gap year allowed a good amount of time for my parents and I to figure out how things would work. Coming back after my first semester, everything is pretty well figured out. That said, after two days I still haven’t shovelled the snow off our sidewalks much to the chagrin of my father. Whatever. I’ll do it later.
An obvious way for parents to facilitate re-integration is to avoid renovating your kid’s bedroom without their consent. I’m assuming very few people, even in retrospect, would look upon the furtive dismantling of their childhood space as a “positive step into the future”.
The first few months of university are on odd transitory phase and it takes some time for both parents and returning children to adjust.
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