Letting Go of Expectations

Parenting Teens with Mental Health Struggles

Several years ago, my dad said with a touch of irony, “We’ll see Ellie at Harvard someday.”

​​At the time, I rolled my eyes and thought, Just because Ellie aces every honors math class and reads college-level books in junior high doesn’t mean she’ll get into an Ivy. A year later, my mother began a quiet campaign to recruit Ellie to her alma mater where she serves on the board of trustees. Since she had opened a college savings account for Ellie before she learned to walk, my mom was just as determined to help steer her granddaughter to a respectable, competitive college as she had been with me. My husband and I joined my parents in expecting Ellie to enroll in a high-caliber college, investing countless hours and dollars to discuss, research and travel across the country to find the “right fit.”

Despite a transcript that revealed her bumpy sophomore year, Ellie managed to get into the college of her dreams. She wasn’t interested in Harvard but she screamed and jumped as she accepted an offer to a prestigious small private liberal arts college. We all breathed a sigh of relief at the story’s happy ending. 

Then Ellie’s struggles with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and ADHD interrupted that story.

If you’ve been following our journey, you know that Ellie is studying at community college this semester after withdrawing from a four-year college in October. Ellie’s not the only one whose mental health caused a detour in her college plans. One of her treatment center friends is also taking a gap year due to mental health, after getting accepted into a selective college. We’ve heard of others.

I’ve been reflecting lately on what it looks like to let go of expectations as a parent, to embrace what is right for my kid when she has veered off the course I charted for her. I’m not talking about being laissez-faire or overly permissive. There are moments to advocate for my child, to help her envision a different reality, to hold firm boundaries, to call her to a higher level of functioning.

But there are also moments to release our dreams and to affirm what is, especially when it’s clear that the dream doesn’t fit our child anymore. For those of us who come into this with the lens of faith, we may realize that perhaps the dream was never God’s plan for that kid anyway; it was the one we crafted, influenced by our family, our community, our culture.

Wrestling with expectations is a theme for parents of teens with mental health struggles. We whip up dreams for our child, and then we see our hopes dashed by the reality of their mental health condition. We watch their peers walk the typical adolescent-young adult path: earning decent grades while jogging down the field with their team or performing in the school musical, posing for decked-out prom pictures, passing driver’s ed, making a happy, successful transition to college life with all its academic and social opportunities. If our child struggles to fit that profile, we may wrestle with envy, frustration, and sadness. Even if they do manage to rejoin the typical path after a temporary withdrawal, we wonder whether they will stay on it.

Areas of Struggle

I’ve reflected on five areas where parents may wrestle with dissonance around what they expected for their children and what reality looks like, especially in the midst of mental health challenges.

Academics

When the teen’s mental health compromises their ability to keep up with their studies, we parents often worry. I remember panicking when Ellie sank into such a deep depression that she barely engaged in school, her grades sliding from A’s to D’s and F’s. She ended several classes with an “Incomplete.” I couldn’t imagine how she would ever catch up. It helped immensely when my mother encouraged me to focus on her health and reminded me that I had permission to let go of the academic rat race. When Ellie entered the treatment center, which meant withdrawing from school for a semester, I had to sit with the discomfort of what this might mean for her future. If you have a teen who has struggled with academics for whatever reason, how have you wrestled with your expectations?

Physical & Emotional Health

The toll that mental health issues take on a teen’s mind, body and heart are broad and deep enough to fill entire textbooks. As parents, we watch, weep, and do whatever we can to bring healing. Sometimes the physical effects of depression, anxiety and eating disorders last for months or years beyond the initial crisis. For example, Ellie’s bulimia has left her with gastrointestinal distress that medicine has yet to resolve. Another friend’s anxiety manifests in pulling out hair, which leaves bald spots. I hear of parents who struggle with migraines due to the stress of parenting an eating disordered teen. How have the physical and emotional effects of your child’s condition surprised or overwhelmed you?

Life Events

I hear parents worry about missing major milestones. Should I enroll my kid in residential, even if they miss finals and prom? What about graduation? What if they miss a family wedding, a significant family trip, a funeral, a major holiday? None of these are easy answers and all of them are personal decisions. All of them force us to review and release expectations of what we dreamed of, hoped for, and counted on.

Friendships

It’s hard enough to develop deep, supportive friendships as a teenager; doing it while struggling with mental health is even harder. If our kids are very lucky, they may have a few supportive friends who will listen to their struggles and stick by them. More often, teens with mental health challenges withdraw from others, as Ellie did, or keep up friendships while hiding their depression, anxiety or eating disorder. Either way, these teens can feel lonelier than ever. Sometimes they discover friends who share their struggles, which can be validating, except when one of them relapses.

What are your expectations about your teen’s friendships? What did you envision as they entered adolescence, in terms of their ability to enjoy a close circle of friends? I’ve needed to grieve the ways Ellie’s social anxiety limits her social life.

Family Life

What did you envision in terms of how your family would interact? How do your teen’s mental health issues affect their siblings? Or family dynamics? What kind of relationship did you hope for with your teen versus what it actually looks like? 

I’m grateful for a close relationship with Ellie and for our tight-knit family that eats dinner together most nights. But Ellie’s anxiety has forced my husband and me to adjust how we lead our family of five, how we vacation, how we communicate. The weight of Ellie’s struggles has impacted her siblings in a variety of ways, both positive and negative.

Adjusting Expectations

My reflections come from my own continual life learning, rather than from any formal training. I appreciate Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ work to explain the five stages of grief: anger, denial, bargaining, grief and acceptance. I can see how I’ve cycled through all of them when it comes to my expectations around Ellie, probably spending the most time in the bargaining stage, desperately trying to change reality. I’ve also heard that expectations are premeditated resentments, meaning that I’m unconsciously setting up scenarios to resent the person who isn’t cooperating according to my plans. 

Yet I am also helped by the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Learning about Ellie’s mental health conditions and how they affect her helps me become more accepting of her limitations and her needs. It also helps me to realize that my ability to change her and her health is limited. What she needs most from me is unconditional love and acceptance, to know that she is okay exactly as she is today. 

I need the courage to change what I can, which often means supporting Ellie in navigating her health needs and advocating for her when she struggles. Sometimes I need the most courage to change myself (my attitudes, my perspective, my words), rather than anything about Ellie.

It's often unclear to me what I can and cannot change. I ask God for the wisdom to know the difference, and I ask wise, experienced friends, who can often be God’s vessels to help me work through confusing scenarios.

Poet Alexandra Vasilu¹ writes,

“Letting go will teach you

the art

of being soft and humble,

yet powerful and free.”

Letting go has provided an unexpected power and freedom, along with a new perspective.

Back to Ellie’s college journey. In the past six months, I’ve accepted that despite Ellie’s intellectual prowess, she will need significant support to succeed in college. That means that we’ve changed our college search to focus exclusively on schools (often big state schools that we’d never previously considered) that have special programs for neurodivergent students. I’m less interested in having Ellie enroll in a school with competitive academics and more concerned with finding someplace with enough professional support for Ellie to launch into independent living.

By letting go of the disappointment of Ellie’s first college experience, I can see the gifts of this gap year. For starters, I never expected to like community college this much! The caring teachers have made their classrooms a true community, while teaching Ellie about anthropology and writing. It’s given Ellie the perfect stepping stone into college academics.

Second, the break from academic and social stress has been deeply healing for Ellie. She seems happier than she ever did in high school, offering smiles, easy conversation and her opinion on world events. She’s discovered a passion for gluten-free baking and she cooks delicious dinners for our family. Part of Ellie’s withdrawal from college was due to physical issues stirred up by COVID last summer; having this time at home has allowed us to explore medical issues that have bothered her for years. Even though I envy my friends whose college freshman are flourishing, I’m also aware of the privilege of enjoying daily Ellie hugs and companionship that will disappear when she’s away.

Third, this year has given Ellie space to learn some key adulting skills that take longer for her than a neurotypical teen. She has become a master at public transportation, shops for groceries, cooks for our family, and navigates the complexities of the healthcare system.

Last week, my husband and I logged onto an info session about a college program for neurodivergent students. I left the session brimming with anticipation, as if I’d found the perfect birthday gift for Ellie. I never envisioned being so excited about recognizing my daughter’s disabilities and finding a program to support her.

But that’s what letting go has given me: the humility and freedom to release what I once hoped for and the willingness and power to embrace the gifts that I never knew our family needed.  

1. https://www.alexandravasiliu.net/letting-go-is-an-art/