Off to uni and off God? Helping your child connect with Christians

We all remember our first day at uni right? The nervous journey travelling with the car laden with stuff, the awkward moment when you said ‘good-bye’ to your parents. Closing the door on your room and thinking ‘crumbs, this is really happening!’

In my case I not only experienced this for myself, but had the chance to observe it many times when I became a staff worker with UCCF and observed the poor guys going through it for the first time, which will be 414,000 of them this Autumn.

Dom Mould, a recent graduate from the University of Birmingham, put it like this:“I was quite scared about moving to a new city, especially because I’m from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. And so to move to a big city was quite daunting. I had loads of questions: “will I find people that I like?”; “will I get on with everyone?”; “will people like me?”; “what will my flat be like?” I think the unknowns of going to university are quite daunting. There’s a lot of excitement as well, like knowing that I felt it was so right to go there.”

The emotional cauldron is of course shared by parents: Hannah Miller is the founder of The Purpose Pursuit, and a mum to three boys. She shared what the first day felt like when her son, Noah started university a couple of years ago: “Tt was wonderful because he was going where he wanted to. But it was also genuinely heartbreaking as well, I was really sad to let him go. Very excited for him. I felt all the emotions all day for several days.”