After a Year at College, the Shock of Homecoming

Cheryl and John Meshack have noticed changes in their 18-year-old daughter’s attitude. “Bold would be a good word to describe it,” Cheryl Meshack said with a giggle. “It’s like one day she told me, ‘I just have to get an ID to go out dancing at the clubs. Everyone has one, you know.’ ”

The Meshacks aren’t the only parents who have been through some changes with their college-aged offspring. The freshman blues are hitting hard and fast in Southern California, as young adults, who just months ago bid wrenching, teary goodbys and headed off to college, now are returning for that first, long summer back home.

And in what has become a seasonal domestic ritual--or battle, in some cases--parents and collegians alike are having difficulty readjusting.

“College gave me the right to make my own decisions and spend my money the way I saw fit,” LaJohn Meshack explains, adding that her transition from Howard University in Washington to home again was rough from the start.

“I’m never living here again,” she teases. “My parents are really getting on my nerves! It’s always ‘What time are you getting home? When do you start work? Clean up your room! Do your chores!’ ”

Tom Martin, 19, from San Diego State University, has had a similar experience, he says, adding: “It’s like I can’t let my clothes sit around my room anymore. My parents are always nagging me to pick them up and clean my room.”

Bill Reeves, an 18-year-old Yale University freshman, said he wasn’t back a week before his parents began to discuss his summer plans. “They said if I don’t get a job, I get to paint the house.”

He’s been with paint brush and ladder ever since.

His mother, Emily, jokes about the return home of her son, the last of four children to leave the nest. “There have been some definite changes around the house,” she says. “When (Bill) left, the milk kept getting sour. I had to learn how to buy fewer groceries. Now we keep running out of milk and I have to remember to buy more. It’s been some getting used to.”

The Meshacks, a family of five, say their house is active even when LaJohn is in school. “The traffic just picks up when she gets back,” says her father, John. “You have to get used to other people being in your house, the phone being used more, the phone bill going up. I go to my bedroom and try to get away from it all. But at times, it’s just no use.”

Mother Cheryl complains that “it’s those music videos” that drive her up the wall. “You come home from work and you’re tired and this hot gust of wind in the form of loud music meets you at the door. You’d think they are all deaf or something!”

To find more harmony in their reunited households, both parents and returning collegians simply need to relax, advises Jerome Karasic, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Southern California. He describes confrontations between students and parents as “human nature” at work.

“There is a need for young people, college age, to get away from their parents,” he says. “It’s a natural transition. The young adult needs to fulfill his or her own life.” When young adults find themselves cast back into their homes with their former, adolescent restrictions, they can, he says, strive too hard to hold onto their independence.

That can be a pain, some parents complain, saying they feel their youngsters fail to see their point of view.

“He feels that I am prying a little more than I should,” Emily Reeves says of her son. “I said it was because he was my last child . . . and he says that’s no excuse.”

Waiting Up for Kids

Mother Meshack observes: “You’ve got to wait up for these kids. While they are out having a good time, they forget you’re worried sick about them.

“Why,” she says of her daughter, “I remember one time she went out with a group of her friends. She said she’d be back at 1:30 (a.m.). Instead, she calls at 1:30 to tell me that they are going to get in her girlfriend’s Jacuzzi. I told her she’d better Jacuzzi herself home.”

Mother Reeves sees how problems develop, explaining: “You have no rules when you are a freshman in college. When you come home, you have all sorts of rules to live by. I can understand the difficulty in adjusting.”

Martin, the oldest of three children, says his parents question him about his activities, “but not in the nagging sense. One night I came home late, and the next morning they asked me where I had been. I know they didn’t know what time I came in. They were just concerned.”

To ease tensions, “families need to really sit and talk” about life at school versus home, says Marianne Ross, a licensed psychologist and coordinator of clinical services at the University of California at Irvine.

Curfew Hours

Karasic recommends that parents “let the kids make their own hours. It’s important to let them regulate their own lives.” But he adds “that means taking on responsibilities of adulthood. The parent must say, ‘You can arrange your life as an independent person, but in the manner that I can respect you as an adult.’ ”

Reeves says he is allowed to set his own curfew. The problem? “It’s just that I have to stick to it.”

LaJohn admits, “I didn’t consider my parents strict before I left for college. I guess they are still the same. I’m the one who changed, and I shouldn’t blame them.”

Home has changed for LaJohn. The room she lived in most of her life now is a younger brother’s lair. “Sometimes, I feel like a guest,” she says. “But I think that’s a part of growing up. You know you have three months before you go again. You always know you’ll be leaving again.”

Temporary inconveniences aside, parents see positive changes accompanying their children’s new sense of independence.

Martin’s father, Chuck, observes of his son: “I think he’s a little more appreciative of home when he’s here--you know, the home-cooked meals, the laundry, family life. I think he’s starting to realize that everything is not easy out there in the big world.”

Cheryl Meshack proudly recounts the day she sat with her daughter in church and LaJohn told her, “You know, Mom, I really understand why you do some of the things you do. I guess I’m pretty lucky to have a mom like you.”

Hate Being Simon Legree

“That was really nice to hear because you hate always being Simon Legree,” she said. “But, I know when she hits 30, she will really appreciate these things.”

Emily Reeves says she appreciates that her son’s year in New Haven, Conn., seems to have seasoned his sense of humor, which he displayed when they were stopped at an intersection near their home and a young driver ran a stop sign, swerved in front of their car and just missed hitting them.

“I joked, ‘He must be a college freshmen returning home,’ ” Reeves said.

“Naw,” her son replied. “A college freshmen would never drive like that.”