Practical Advice for Parenting College Students and Young Adult Children: What I Learned After My Kid Left Home
It’s 11:27 pm on a Tuesday in October, and I’m sitting on my couch picking at stale popcorn, half-watching a Great British Baking Show re-run, when my phone lights up with my daughter Lila’s name. It was six weeks after she moved into her dorm three hours away, and I’d been sleeping with my phone on full volume under my pillow ever since she left. I answered on the second ring, and she was sobbing too hard to talk at first. By the time she caught her breath, I’d already pulled up driving directions to her campus and was reaching for my keys. She’d failed her first college chem quiz, locked her keys in her dorm after grabbing late-night tacos, her roommate had eaten her leftover pad thai out of the fridge, and she’d missed the deadline to join the only study group for the class. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I should just drop out and come home.”
For 18 years, my job had been to fix things. If she forgot her lunch, I dropped it off at the high school front office. If she got a bad grade on a paper she said was unfair, I emailed her teacher to ask for a regrade. If she fought with her best friend, I texted the girl’s mom to work out a truce. My first instinct was to say “I’m on my way” and fix all of it for her. But my older sister, who’d already sent two kids through college, had texted me two days before when I’d complained about Lila calling me three times a day, and she’d said “Whatever you do, don’t drive up for every small crisis. Let her work through it first.” I froze with my hand on my car keys, sitting back down on the couch. I took a breath and said, “That is the worst string of bad luck I’ve heard all month. That all sucks, so bad. Let’s start with the keys, okay? Who do you call to get let back into your dorm this late?”
She sniffled and said “The front desk? But I don’t know if they answer after 11.” I said, “Do you have their number saved? Why don’t you call them, and I’ll stay right here on the line with you while you talk.” Fifteen minutes later, a staff member had let her in, and we moved on to the quiz. I didn’t tell her it was no big deal. I didn’t say “you’re smart, you’ll do better next time.” I asked her, “What does your syllabus say about dropping low quiz grades? Pull it up on your student portal and check.” She fumbled around for a minute, then said “Oh. They drop one quiz a semester. That’s this one.” We worked through the rest: she’d email her chem professor the next morning to ask to be added to the study group, she could use the $20 I’d sent her for snacks to buy a new pad thai from the place down the street, and she could talk to her roommate about labeling food when they were both less cranky. By the end of the call, she was laughing a little, and she hung up to go get her tacos.
I sat there with my cold popcorn, and I realized that every single article I’d read about parenting college students had given me useless advice: “just give them space” or “be supportive” or “enjoy your empty nest.” None of it told me what to actually do when your 18-year-old is crying on the phone at 11:30 pm. Over the past year and a half, I’ve picked up a few small, concrete things that actually work, things I wish someone had told me before Lila left.
First, always name the bad before you try to fix anything. If they say their quiz sucked or their roommate is annoying, don’t brush it off and say “it’s not that bad.” It is that bad, to them. Just say “that sounds so frustrating. I’d be upset too.” That alone calms most of the panic way faster than jumping to a solution. Second, use the “stay on the line” trick when they have to do something scary or new. Instead of doing it for them, or telling them to just do it, offer to stay on the phone while they call the financial aid office or email their professor. It gives them the safety net they need without taking the work away from them.
Third, don’t give advice unless they explicitly ask for it. When Lila texted me a photo of a small ankle tattoo she was thinking of getting six months ago, my first instinct was to tell her she’d regret it. Instead, I just said “That’s a really pretty design. What made you pick that?” She ended up changing her mind a week later, after she realized it was an impulse thing after a bad break up. If I’d told her no, she probably would have gotten it just to prove she could. Fourth, let them deal with small, non-dangerous consequences. Earlier this year, Lila forgot to renew her FAFSA by the deadline. I’d reminded her three times, but she got busy with midterms and let it slip. I didn’t call the financial aid office to fix it for her. I sat with her while she looked up the late appeal process, and I helped her proofread her email, but she sent it herself. She got her aid approved, and she set three separate reminders for next year. She hasn’t forgotten anything that important since.
I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing half the time. Last month, Lila called and said she wanted to drop her pre-med track to study education. I held my breath for a full 10 seconds before I said anything, because we’d talked about her being a pediatrician since she was 12. But I just asked her what she liked about her education classes, and she talked for 20 minutes about how much she loved the after-school program she volunteers at near campus.
I still worry sometimes. I wonder if she’ll regret changing tracks, I wonder if I’m too hands off or too hands on, I miss being the person she ran to for every little broken bike or bad test. But yesterday she texted me a photo of her sitting on the playground with a group of first graders, and she added a line that said “thanks for not telling me I was being crazy when I said I wanted to switch majors.” That’s more than I could have asked for. It’s messy, it’s not the parenting I knew when they were little, but it’s working, for right now.
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