As we begin creating new content for our followers, students, and their families, we are hoping to share the story from our Bear POWER Family Newsletter. Avery Brooks, Bear POWER Ambassador, has begun to provide tips and resources for the parents within our program. Check out the full newsletter here!

Bear POWER Family Newsletter (9/24/2020)

Letting Go and Letting Grow

Hello again! Welcome back to the second issue of the Bear POWER Family Newsletter! This week, we are tackling a bit of a sensitive subject: Letting Go & Letting Grow. We felt that this was the perfect subject to discuss in the second newsletter because it directly piggy-backs off our topic last week, Supporting Your Student from a Distance. In order to properly support your student during this time, you should decrease the amount of control you hold over their life. Naturally, this will raise some fears and worries; your main job as a parent over the past several years has been to help guide and direct your student’s path. However, realize that the anxiety you may feel right now as your student transitions into independent living is completely normal! Many parents face this feeling as they learn to let their students go. As the semester continues, the worry and stress you carry now will subside and become more manageable. The most important piece of advice we can give to aid in this transition is to remind yourself that by letting go, you are allowing your student to fully experience college life, and they will naturally learn to problem-solve for themselves. Instead of giving you tips in this week’s newsletter, we will provide a couple examples of behaviors that could hinder your student from growing that you may not even realize, and ways to avoid this so you and your student can thrive during the course of this semester.

Example #1: Seeking or creating job opportunities specifically for your student and their disability.

One of the primary goals of the Bear POWER program is to prepare our students to find true employment opportunities; we want our students to receive a job based on their natural skills and merits, not due to their disability. As a parent, it is natural to worry about your student’s future career path; after all, you want them to be successful and have a stable job. However, by seeking positions that are created specifically for an individual with a disability, you are unknowingly limiting your student’s potential. You have lived with your student for many years; therefore, you know all their amazing attributes! You know that they are just as intelligent, driven, and capable as any other person that could fill that job vacancy. However, by specially crafting a position just for them, you are inhibiting your student from earning that job based on those qualifications previously noted; instead, they may be receiving the position out of empathy or charity. Thus, allow your student to seek job opportunities independently, and be willing to accept that they may not get the job; this teaches the student to work toward a goal and earn it, which indirectly produces maturity.

Example 2: Helping your student with their homework.

This is something most, if not all, parents are guilty of doing at one point in time or another. Much like in the previous example, as a parent, you want your student to succeed. We also know how discouraging it can be to get a bad grade on an assignment or a test; everyone has dealt with the feeling of frustration and fear after receiving a poor grade and wondering how it will affect your final grade. Therefore, it can be compelling to try to help your student fix their score; after all, you know how hard they worked on the project, or how hard they studied for the test, so they deserve a grade that accurately reflects their efforts. However, we urge you to refrain from doing this at all costs; this severely hinders your student’s growth, as it creates feelings of dependency and entitlement. We at Bear POWER want your student to succeed; we want them to flourish in any classes or activities they decide to pursue. However, we also want our students to learn that it is acceptable not be perfect; everyone is going to make mistakes, and we want the students to learn from the errors they make so they can grow as an individual. Therefore, understand that your student may not get good grades in every class, as many college students vary in their academic performance.

A key point we want to stress that ties these two examples together is understanding that you are not responsible for teaching your student everything; much like other college students, yours will learn the skills necessary to live independently, whether they learn these skills on their own or through their peers or ambassadors. While you may think that you are helping them by trying to do everything for them, you are actually stunting their development, and the first semester of college is the most pivotal time for your student to grow. Therefore, a crucial way to help your student during this new season of college, you only need to remember one thing: let go. Once you let go, it will be no time before you will watch your student grow.

Thanks for joining us for our second installment of the Bear POWER Family Newsletter! We hope you join us next week for our third topic: Ways to Not Hinder Your Student’s Progress.