Gooden Blog

What if it’s true that adult job satisfaction depends on which doors are opened by one’s college alma mater, and in turn, one’s college acceptance depends on where one graduated from high school, and so on . . . all the way back to preschool?  Whoa. Even if we don’t buy the idea that the trajectory is always quite so linear, the reality is that waiting on admissions decisions throughout our children’s lives is pretty stressful. But we don’t have to sit in that stress or let it overtake us. The following three practices are particularly helpful to families as we anticipate admissions decisions.

Name It to Tame It

The sheer number of acceptance-themed decisions that come our children’s way across the lifespan is staggering—from the lunch table to the dance troupe and from the prom to the first job—we empathize with our kids as they strive for appropriate belonging. While it isn’t particularly effective, let alone accurate, to treat high school acceptance as the ultimate decider of our kids’ futures, it also doesn’t do us much good to go into a kind of denial by pretending that it’s a non-event. By acknowledging that waiting on the final decision can be fraught with anticipation, a lack of control, and conflicting preferences within the family or even within oneself, we’re better equipped to channel our energies into purposeful activity. 

Get Busy Livin’

While it’s important to acknowledge the stress brought on by waiting, we certainly don’t need to buckle under it, succumbing to the “paralysis of analysis,” and spending our time and energy in isolative worry about an outcome we can’t control. One of the human needs highlighted by The Shawshank Redemption was that of engaging in activity that we find generative, productive, and satisfying. In the absence of such pursuits, we might as well “get busy dyin’,” as the Shawshank story goes. What are the activities that you find life-giving? Go do ’em! Channel that anticipatory anxiety into your passions. What are the activities your partner or child might name? Do any outings make it onto everyone’s list? Wonderful. Do them together. When was the last time you grabbed your favorite burger or walked the beach? Hiked Mt. Baldy? Went sledding? Volunteered at church? Go. The admissions decision will come on its own time, along with plenty of other variables you’re also waiting on; you have other things to do right now. 

Author Your Narrative, Help Your Child Do the Same

If our lives were so linear that adult job- or life-satisfaction ultimately boiled down to any given disappointment earlier in life, two things would be nightmarishly true: 1) Life would be stale: there would be no room for adaptation, spontaneity, or ways that God’s blessing can transcend circumstance. 2) All of our autonomy would belong to whomever rendered that one critical denial—from the boyfriend or girlfriend who dumped us to the dormitory that was already full when we submitted our housing application. But fortunately, life is much . . . sloppier, isn’t it?! As such, immensely important personal characteristics, like resilience, and quality-of-life variables, like job satisfaction, depend not so much on that one binary acceptance/denial, but rather on what we make of the myriad decisions handed to us. As we craft our life stories into dynamic narratives that are exciting yet coherent, our trajectories necessarily include but are not dominated by setbacks, dead-ends, unpleasant surprises, and the like. Although such obstacles may remain undeniably painful, we also come to assign them special status as catalysts of personal growth. Maybe that’s what Garth Brooks had in mind when he sang of his retrospective gratitude for unanswered prayer. 

On the other hand, sometimes our prayers are so well answered that we end up facing difficult decisions. While having multiple schools to choose from might seem a blessing at the outset, such a scenario comes with an incredible responsibility for us, as parents, to be in touch with who our children are, in order to facilitate a decision that will afford them personalized opportunities for their ultimate success. That means it’s important to consider that sometimes the right school for your child isn’t necessarily the one that others have deemed the best school on the list.  

As you anticipate a high school or other admissions decision, may you remain in touch with how you feel, channel any apprehension into activity that nourishes you, and keep the faith in the notion that your child’s placement is but one component of their ultimate purpose.  

Drs. Joe and Carrie Dilley are licensed clinical psychologists and the owners of Synergy Psychological Inc., a private practice in Sierra Madre offering comprehensive psychological services. They are also the parents of Ashton (a third-grader at Gooden) and Jack (preschool).