Now that your child is in college, how much parenting should you continue to do?
Should you be in daily contact? Should you be tracking locations and making rules about who they hang out with and when they do their homework?
Parents struggle to let go, but their adult offspring must be allowed to start their own lives. The hard part is figuring out how much to let go and how to do it.
Congratulations, You Have Successfully Raised A Child To (Nominal) Adulthood
Unless your kid is Sheldon Cooper, when he starts college, he’s probably either an adult or pretty close to being one. We all know legal adulthood doesn’t automatically confer adult levels of responsibility and capability, and we all still want to support and guide our babies (and they’re always our babies).
But the next step is figuring out how to let go and how much to let go.
We can still guide them and be there to give answers, but college might be time to back off of trying to wake our kids for class and monitor their locations and friendships.
Yes, Some Moms Are Still Trying To Be Their Adult Children’s Alarm Clock
An Atlanta mom started a Facebook group for parents adjusting to their kids’ exit. She has since been stunned by some of the questions asked in the group.
According to EdWeek, these include questions about how to ensure their child wakes up in the morning to get to class and about the accuracy of the Snapchat tracker the parent was using to ensure her child was in his dorm room at night.
These questions are more common than you might think—a parenting coach shared on TiKTok last year that she answered a similar one. This mom was tracking her child with Life360 and was upset to learn the college student had slept in someone else’s room. The mom also complained that her daughter’s reaction to being tracked was disrespectful, considering that the parents are paying her tuition.
Tracking Is Probably Too Far, In Most Cases
It is tough to resist using tracking as a control tactic. As you saw in the video above, parenting coach Kim Muench says that tracking is often a problem and that if parents are “brutally honest” with themselves, they’ll acknowledge that even when it’s for safety, it’s also on some level about control.
There are certainly exceptions. I have adults, including my eldest daughter, with whom I share tracking for safety. It started because my daughter—around 14 at the time—came to me and asked me to install Life360 so that she felt safer walking places. Now, granted, since I installed it, I have occasionally gotten a text with a list when I was at the grocery store, but for the most part, it’s used between us in mutually agreed-upon ways.
Tracking isn’t inherently bad. It’s tracking for control purposes and without mutual consent of other adults that is causing problems here.
If you and your child have a mutual understanding about tracking, and you can respect their autonomy, that may work out fine.
How Much Contact Is Too Much?
This will vary by relationship. As long as you aren’t disrupting your child’s classes to make contact, the answer is whatever you’re both comfortable with.
The critical factor here is ensuring your child is comfortable with the same level of contact. If they’re not responding as often as you’re messaging, it might be a good time to discuss what level of contact they want to keep.
However, your child’s normal communication patterns are relevant here. Next Avenue advises:
“If your usually good communicator suddenly goes missing for a week or two of zero contact, it may just mean that life is happily full and attention is elsewhere. But it can also be a sign of trouble brewing or a crisis that has deepened into despair. You have to make a sensible judgment about each child and each situation based on what you know about your son or daughter.”
In that situation, it’s probably time to check in and make sure everything is okay.
Demanding To Be Looped-In By College Administration
Parents don’t only try to maintain control through direct contact or tracking, though. In many cases, they believe the institution owes them some information about their child.
The latest reports suggest that about 85% of parents want weekly contact with their child’s college! About 40% want to be even more directly involved, volunteering at the college or joining an organization similar to a high school PTA group, according to CollegeESP.
We know kids are more motivated when their parents are involved in their education, but at this point, we’re talking about adults, who will soon need to manage their own thesis writing, employment, and potentially even families.
College can be practice for this responsibility if we allow our kids the opportunity.
Parental Roles Change When Our Children Become Adults
Hopefully, by the time our kids go off to college, we’ve taught them to bathe, tie their shoes, dress themselves, cook some basic food items, listen to their teachers, dissent appropriately when called for, fill out a form, sign their name, and set an alarm clock.
If we’ve taught them the most important lessons and done it well, most of our adult children will no longer need us to manage those roles. Psychology Today described our new role beautifully:
“Your child no longer needs you as truant officer or CEO of their life. They need you as a friend…You will be a parent your whole life but your role changes. You change from a benevolent despot to a friend. The despot makes the rules and enforces them. The friend listens. The friend is available for consultation and support.”
So, How Do We Adjust To Their Absence?
I have to admit, my first experience with this was pretty intense, because my oldest joined the Navy and once they left for boot camp, that was basically just the end of communication except for the occasional unpredictable moments when they’d be allowed a quick call. So, for me, it was just getting thrown in the deep end of the pool and sinking or swimming — and I think for my kid it was very similar, no Navy puns intended.
For me, the answer was sending letters, which I could do pretty steadily, and finding other things to occupy my time.
Other moms may find different solutions, but it seems like the top recommendation is to seek out something to fill that empty time. Volunteer, get a hobby, or do extra things with kids who are still at home. You aren’t filling your child’s space in your heart, just some of their space in your schedule.
Arizona State University offers a guide for parents on empty nest syndrome. It recommends acknowledging and accepting your emotions and prioritizing self-care. Now, it’s time to rediscover the personal interests you placed on the back burner to focus on your children, reconnect with friends, and build new social connections.
Trust Your Child & Trust Your Parenting
You’ve done it. You’ve raised an adult. Your grown child is now off to work on their start.
Trust that you’ve given them the tools they need, the support that will help them be resilient and capable, and the lessons that will help them make it through college and beyond.
Know that they still love you and aren’t really gone. They are just moving to a different phase of their life, and they (and their laundry, probably) will be back to visit.
