Kelly Ripa doesnt want her daughter coming home from college
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ middle child, Lola, started her freshman year at New York University last week. Kelly noted the occasion by posting the IG above of her kissing Lola goodbye, which actually gave me a little lump in my throat. Three days prior, Kelly had posted this throwback photo of Lola’s christening, again with an emotional caption:
Kelly was posting a lot of nice Lola pics leading up to her send off. I’ve criticized Kelly for doing the opposite when it comes to Lola so I wanted to give her credit as well. I haven’t sent kids off to school yet so I can only imagine how hard it is. This is Kelly’s second goodbye, her son Michael also attended NYU. But “goodbye and good luck” wasn’t the only message Kelly had for Lola as she embarked on her new life, she also wanted Lola to know she can’t come home. Only Kelly’s setting boundaries for Lola’s benefit and she’s pretty on the money with her reasoning.
The reason Kelly said she needs Lola to stay at school for her own good is as follows:
Kelly was saying that Lola has gone away to college. It’s a big deal. When she went away, you said that, you know, she’s not that far from home, but you want her to feel like she’s far from home.
The whole thing is, college is where you start establishing yourself as an independent person. And I think that when you send your kid away to college, if your kid stays sort of local, you get all of the hassle of sending you kid away to college and none of the sympathy or empathy from your friends. Like, your friends go, ‘oh, at least she’s nearby.’ And I go, yeah, but that’s not good. Because if she feels homesick, say, I have to say to her, ‘no, you can’t come home. You have to work it out. Work out whatever you’re going through. Figure it out. I did the same thing with my son. It’s like, you’re going to have to figure out how to be an adult. This is when you figure it out. Because, the thing is – you got in to more than one school. And when we sat down which school you should go to, this was my main concern. My main concern was, I don’t know if you should be this close to home because I don’t want you using home like it’s your home. I want you to use it as an experience.
First off, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here. But, for once, I’m on Kelly’s side. Not the part about not getting any sympathy for your kid going off to school, I don’t need that. But about kids working through their homesickness or working towards independence. My brothers and I went away for school; same state but several hours away. School/campuses offer a sense of built-in community so it’s a nice bridge between living at home and moving out on your own. My home was my safe place during high school, which I hated. I chose a school where I knew none of my former classmates would be, but that meant leaving my safe space. It was hard, but probably the best thing in the world for me.
And I think the temptation is on both sides. Few parents will receive a call with a crying child saying they want to come home and not race over to pick them up. So, proximity works against both sides’ will power. Later in the interview, Kelly said she’d tried to talk her kids in going to school in San Diego just so she could visit the West Coast. This I can relate to. We visited Cambridge once and my daughter thought it was so pretty, she said she’d like to go there. She was 10 at the time but I keep reminding her of it because I want an excuse to get a pied-a-terre in Saffron-Walden. Whether Lola goes home or not, I wish her luck in this next phase of her life.
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Instagram
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