A New Challenge, Parenting Your College Student

By: Helen Johnson

You’re about to embark on an exciting, but daunting, adventure. You’re not alone if you’re feeling a mixture of excitement and dread. You may wonder, “What is my role now that my child is in college?”

You’ve probably heard the term ‘helicopter parent.’ A ‘helicopter parent’ hovers over every aspect of a child’s life. That may have been appropriate when your child was 2, 6 or even 14 years old. Now, however, it is not only inappropriate, it is actually damaging to your child’s development.

While it may be compelling to want to jump in and fix every problem that your child encounters in the adjustment to college life, I urge you to step back from this impulse and put your child’s developmental needs first. It is only through encountering some bumps in the road and figuring out how to navigate those bumps that college students develop the crucial skills they need to master independent adulthood. If you step in to solve their problems for them, you are sending the powerful message that you don’t believe your college student is capable of learning to be independent.

I challenge you to ask yourself these key questions:

• What is my goal in trying to solve this problem for my child?
• What capabilities do I want my child to have when he or she walks across the stage to accept a diploma and step into adult life?
• What am I getting out of attempting to keep my child dependent on me?
• Does this have more to do with my needs than my child’s?

I know these are tough questions, but too many college parents today, perhaps with the best of intentions, are actually making it more difficult for students to practice the skills they need to manage life in college and beyond. Critical skills, such as asking for help, negotiating relationships with others, showing self-reliance in the face of adversity and creating personal goals, can only be developed though a certain amount of struggle and self-examination. You cannot do this for your son or daughter, but you can be a trusted, caring consultant as your child faces these challenges.

This means becoming a very good listener, responding to your child’s experiences by expressing confidence in his or her ability to handle decisions independent of your constant attention and intervention. This means learning a new style of parenting, one that we describe in detail in our book, “Don’t Tell Me What to do, Just Send Money: The Essential Parenting Guide to the College Years.”