This is Ask Lisa, a podcast to help people understand the psychology of parenting, now in the midst of a pandemic.

Psychologist Dr. Lisa DeMore, author of two New York Times best-selling parenting books, takes your questions.

And I'm co-host, Rina Ninan, a journalist and mom of two.

Some of what we talk about comes from raising children ourselves. Most of the time, I'll be

getting answers to your parenting questions. So send your questions to ask Lisa at

dr.lisa demure.com. In episode 15, we talk about upcoming college admissions.

Lisa, it's hard to imagine. It's already that time of year where parents and students are

thinking about college applications. I know. I know. Here we are. You know, it's strange because

these college visits that usually take place aren't happening. Yep. And how do you deal with

school that's really been disrupted, right? It's interesting. We got a letter from a psychologist

who was talking about the college admissions programs and saying that I'm a psychologist,

and even these experiences are challenging all of my emotional resources.

And someone sent in this question saying, how do you manage our feelings of hopelessness and

of fear to avoid putting those feelings on our seniors?

And after what's been such a difficult, as this person describes,

grief-stricken senior year. Oh, man, that's such a good question. So part of what I would say is

how you manage it is you let us take care of your questions here in the Ask Lisa podcast so that you

can get a sense of peace. And when you have some peace about it, it's much easier

to help your kids have some sense of peace about it.

Yeah, it's really hard to sort of figure out what the future looks like and also the next

couple years, and it's a lot of these students have worked so hard to get to this point.

Yeah, no, there's sort of, you know, all this work and all this run up, and especially for the seniors,

...