Ep. 135 5 Coping Skills for Midlife Parents to Reduce Anxiety, Strengthen Connection, and Navigate College Costs With Their Child

Feeling overwhelmed by the financial burden of college?
Navigating these tough conversations with your child without guilt, stress, or unnecessary conflict is not easy.

In this episode, you’ll discover

1. Five essential coping strategies to make informed, confident financial decisions while strengthening your relationship with your child.
2. How to engage your child in financial discussions—even if they’re resistant—and equip them with lifelong money management skills.
3.  Ways to process difficult emotions like guilt and jealousy so they don’t cloud your decision-making.

Tune in now to gain clarity, confidence, and practical strategies for navigating the emotional and financial challenges of paying for college—without letting stress take over!

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover how to navigate the emotional and financial challenges of paying for your child's college without letting guilt or stress take over. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Thursday and I'm following up on Monday's episode where we talked about how you as a midlife parent can help your child navigate the disappointment of not getting into a college they wanted, or being rejected from a job they applied for. Ugh, we thought parenting an infant was tough, but midlife parenting comes with its own set of heartaches. Navigating your own emotions is key to helping your child work through their rejection, so they come out the other end, believing in themselves. But what happens when financial limitations are the root of the disappointment? Your child gets into a school, but now you both must figure out if the money is there all while your senior is mentally checking out of the process. In today's episode, I'll share five practical coping strategies that will not only help you make sound financial decisions But also help you and your child approach the conversation with greater connection, clarity, and a mutual understanding that this is a collaborative approach that all of you together are embarking on so you can figure out how to pay for college. Let's do a quick check in on Monday's Inner Challenge. Your Inner Challenge this week was to pay attention to how you respond when someone you love faces a disappointment. Do you rush in to fix it? Do you distract? Are you an avoider? Or are you good at simply being present? As we move into today's topic, it's essential to recognize your tendencies. If you're a fixer, you may commit to financial decisions you'll regret five years down the road. If you tend to distract or avoid, you might miss important opportunities to educate yourself on financing college. But there's no reason to despair. Growth often comes from these difficult situations and for most people, paying for college is one of them. Let me begin by stating the obvious. Sending a beloved child off to college is an emotional rollercoaster, not just for them, but for you as well. I love this stage of life, as long as it's not one of my kids going through it. I have worked with so many high schoolers in this stage. They are a fascinating mix of excitement for the future and fear of leaving their past behind, all wrapped up in a I've got this attitude. As I sit with them, witnessing their fear, uncertainty, excitement, and curiosity, I am constantly amazed at the ability humanity has to hold so many conflicting emotions at once. Years ago, a young woman said it perfectly, I have got to get out of this town, but I can't go too far away. That sums up what it means to be a high school senior today. This emotional push and pull is exactly why navigating the financial aspect of college with your child can be so unpredictable. Their emotions will fluctuate, and they may not always be the most stable partner in the process. But that is completely normal. If you can only remember this one thing from this podcast, I will have done my job for you today. Resist taking their push me pull me attitudes personally. It won't necessarily make figuring out how to pay for college any easier, but it will help you stay grounded and avoid unnecessary hurt as you all move through this important life transition. One of the most common reactions I see in my office expenses is disbelief. Not just at the price. But how quickly the years have gone by. You probably thought you'd have more time to save for college, or maybe you were hoping that your kid would get a scholarship to help offset the costs. Unless you won the lottery or have a trust fund, you likely feel a loss of control when it comes to facing these expenses. There's nothing like having to pay for your child's college to put you in touch with your own money issues. this moment can bring up Deep seated guilt or regret about past financial decisions, or it might serve as anxiety about your own financial future. If you are divorced that brings up a whole nother maze of complexity that you must work through. Recognizing and working through these emotions is an important process. Don't hesitate to find a trusted friend or therapist to help you process this part of figuring out college costs. According to current estimates, the average cost of college is 100, 000 to 220, 000 a year. That's a staggering amount. To make matters more complicated, true costs, including loans and scholarships, are often unknown until your child is accepted. By that time, they're exhausted from the whole process and they may resist engaging in financial discussions. This is where I come in. Let's talk about a few strategies to navigate this stressful time in a way that not only builds financial literacy, but helps strengthen your connection and your support for one another. Coping skill number one. Put your own oxygen mask on first. First and foremost, come to peace with what you can contribute. Self compassion is key here. You did your best. If guilt creeps in, remind yourself life is expensive. If you need to, talk to a trusted friend, your spouse, or even a therapist to process these feelings before discussing finances with your child. Remember, your job is to guide your child through this process and you won't be able to do your best if you haven't worked through your own feelings about what you can contribute. Coping skill number two. Don't go through this alone, and you might be surprised what I mean by that. Paying for college is complex. Grants, scholarships, loans, work study programs, they all impact your child's financial future. I encourage you to seek guidance from financial aid officers, financial planners, or a banker. You probably have access to at least one of these resources and I strongly encourage you to use them. Here is my key recommendation. Include your child in these conversations. A universal truth about high school seniors, they'll often listen more to other adults than their own parents. Use that to your advantage. If you didn't start discussing college costs the summer before senior year, you may now find yourself with only a month or two to figure everything out. You got this. I have worked with so many people in this situation. You may be tempted to handle the process solo because your child is too busy with school, sports, and homework. Don't do that. If they don't have time to go to the meetings, I encourage setting up the meetings, taking them out of school so they can be with you to really hear this information. reinforces the importance of the discussion and it encourages their engagement. A past client of mine learned this the hard way. She attended a private college and at the end of her freshman year, she found out that the financial aid package would change drastically because she would be the only child in the family in college. She had not been involved in Any of the discussions and she was so angry at her parents. Because they had not anticipated this shift in payment. When I asked her if she had sat with her parents while they were figuring out how to put the loans and the grants and everything together, she shook her head and said, well, no, they kept asking me, but I was too busy. And in that moment, she grew up a little bit. she could blame her parents. But the truth was, she really hadn't participated in the process. There's something that happens when parents say to their child, we're taking you out of school because these decisions are so important that we want you to learn and to hear what's going on so you too can have a say in how your college is going to be paid for. When you meet with these experts, I encourage you to end the conversation with this question. What am I not asking that I should know? This is the difficult part of paying for college, especially if this is your first child. You really don't know what the heck you're doing, and you do rely on people who know more than you to educate you. That question can be very helpful to getting information that may have been glossed over. If you're going to go meet with somebody, throw it in the chat GPT. Going to meet with my financial planner about paying for college. Any questions I should be asking? Establishing with your child that they are part of this conversation leads to coping skill number three. Understanding debt. How much is too much? When my son got into his dream school, he would've needed to take out a hundred thousand dollars in loans. No one loves college more than my husband, and being the wonderful father he is, he said, and I quote. I'll work until I'm 99 if it means he can go to that school. It was really sweet, but our son had other affordable options. I didn't want to be the one to shut down his dream. But I also didn't want to be the one to let him make a decision without understanding the future impact on him. So I arranged for him to meet with a banker who walked him through the reality of paying a thousand dollars in student loans every month for 10 years. I never knew exactly what she said, but when he walked out of the meeting, I could tell she had an impact. He didn't say much, nor did I ask, because I wanted to impress upon him that this was his decision. But a few weeks later, he chose a school that That wasn't that impressive to his high school friends, but later in life, it was impressive that he graduated with no undergraduate debt. Remember, college is not just an academic education. It's a financial one too. So understanding debt is a vital life skill. Coping skill number four, encourage work as part of the college experience. Of course, many college students work, I've met a lot of them who don't. What I often see are college students who over commit to clubs and activities, spending 10 20 hours a week on unpaid obligations. I encourage you to have work be part of your child's experience. Suggest they think of a part time job as a club that pays them for their membership, as well as something that is very impressive to future employers. Even 5 to 10 hours of work per week can offset expenses, provide valuable skills, and teach time management. Coping skill number five, tame your jealousy. Colleges become more about competition than opportunity. If your child gets into their dream school and can afford it, they'll feel like they've won. If they can't, they'll feel like they've lost. You will experience this too. Jealousy is a normal human experience. But trust me, you don't want to stay there. A past client of mine felt so jealous towards one of her friends whose parents were paying for their grandchild's college. Her and her husband had worked so hard and here they were, having to deny their child the school of her dreams. I gently asked her to take a breath and to sit with her jealousy, to honor it, to notice, to name and to tame. As she did this, I could see her face. It moved from anger and then tears went down her cheeks. And she said, this is not the person I want to be. I don't want to be jealous that my friend's parents have money. Exactly. This is not the person you are. Jealousy is a momentary feeling. Unless we keep feeding the tiger. It's basically you're hurt all twisted. Untwist it. You are hurt that you can't give your beloved child what you would love to give your child. Feel the hurt. So you can move to a better, healthier place and trust me, you'll probably have the opportunity to support your child, when that little monster of jealousy strikes their heart. In this episode, we've explored the challenges of discussing and planning for college costs with your child. We talked about coming to terms with your financial reality, seeking expert guidance, Involving your child in financial discussions and understanding the impact of student debt and encouraging responsible financial habits by using these strategies, as well as noticing, naming, and taming all the complex emotions that come with sending a child off to college. Paying for college is a process. It's not a one time conversation, and it will require multiple discussions. Expect your child to have lots of ups and downs along the way, but by you remaining steady and engaged, you'll help them build a foundation of financial awareness, problem solving skills, and personal growth that will serve them well in the many years to come. As your child steps into the complexities of adulthood, they'll continue to face many new financial and life decisions. How wonderful it is that they can count on you, not to fix everything, not to avoid the challenges, but to be steady, honest, and a supportive resource as they navigate these very big questions. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.