Nursing Parents Through a Child’s First Week Away at College

Pity the poor parent.

We’ve all heard the stories this fall about the anxieties of first-time college students. But nobody pays too much attention to what parents are going through.

From my office at Santa Monica College, I see firsthand what it’s like to be a parent of a college freshman.

Take it from me, the anxiety is as real for parents as it is for students making the leap from high school to higher education. And the anxiety manifests itself in some strange ways.

Consider, for instance, the mother of a student who wanted to join the PTA at UCLA. It’s one of many stories about parents making the rounds at colleges like mine as the academic year gets under way.

The stories I have heard range from funny to sad, from pathetic to touching. All are about the very difficult struggle parents have with letting go.

That struggle can begin as early as high school. “I can remember one mother whose son was a bright kid who wasn’t telling his mom about the colleges he was applying to in his senior year of high school,” said one counselor. “I told the mother, ‘Don’t worry, that’s normal,’ and she burst into tears and cried out, ‘But Harry’s never been normal!’ ”

As the first day of college approaches, anxiety builds. Family fights are not uncommon. The young adults have mixed feelings about their upcoming independence; the parents are grappling with conflicting emotions as well. What the parents and children often forget to tell each other is that they will miss each other.

“There’s nothing sadder than seeing parents shaking hands with their kids in their dorm rooms, and then when the parents leave, the student is crying and the parents are crying in their cars,” said one UCLA administrator and veteran of parent-orientation sessions.

Some parents do not know how to say goodby. So, they hang around. A dean at Pepperdine University says it is not unusual to see parents having breakfast with their sons and daughters in the campus cafeteria days into the school year. One time, the dean said she was stopped by a mother and father who asked her outright: “How do we say goodby to our son?”

Pepperdine University, like most four-year universities, holds parent-orientation sessions to deal with such issues as separation anxiety. During that day, Pepperdine puts together a panel of employees who have just sent their own offspring to college. The session is filled with personal stories and is often highly emotional.

“I had a father who came up to me after one of those sessions and said to me, ‘I’m not a heart person, I’m a head person.’ But then he started to tell me that the session was very touching, and before he could go on, he broke down and cried,” recalled one Pepperdine administrator.

Even after the goodbys are said, some parents cannot let go.

“I know of one mother who called every other day from Ohio, and this happened all four years her daughter was at school,” the campus pastor at a private Southern California university said. “And when her daughter wasn’t there to answer her calls, she became irate.”

Some students go home every weekend. The wealthy parents of a Saudi Arabian student I know of flew him back from California for a homecoming nearly every month. Other parents check up on their sons and daughters with unannounced visits and late-night phone calls.

Some nervous parents assume responsibility for matters the students themselves should be handling. They may step in to settle a roommate dispute or diagnose a cold and schedule a doctor’s appointment.

Sometimes it’s a parent surrogate who fusses over the well-being of a student. An English professor here tells me that when a young actor, the son of a famous singer, was in his class, the father sent his agent to the teacher-student conferences.

The agent was very protective of his celebrity charge, and did all the talking for him. “At the last conference, I told the young man that he got a C, and I told the agent that he deserved 10% of that C,” the English professor recalled.

Parental problems are not the exclusive domain of four-year universities. Community colleges, which are traditionally commuter schools, must also weather the storms of parental angst.

Community college counselors tell me it is not uncommon to see parents accompany their sons and daughters to academic planning sessions. Usually the parents do all the talking and try to map out their children’s academic careers.

Counselors prefer to talk to the students alone--to find out what they want, not what their parents want. But getting rid of the parents isn’t always easy.

One mother who agreed to drop her son off for a counseling session waited in her car just 20 minutes before tracking her son down to help him choose his courses for the semester.

So, we are asked, what’s a parent to do?

Here are some of suggestions for freshman parents:

* Maintain your sense of humor. One of my colleagues who used to run parent-orientation sessions at UCLA said he was frequently asked if the campus had a drug problem.

“I’d say, ‘No, you can get any kind you want,’ and they’d go purple in the face. Then, I’d have to explain to them that UCLA is a big place, and hopefully they’d brought their children up so they don’t do drugs.”

* After you drop your child off at the dorm, plan a specific date for your next visit together. That way, both parent and student have something to anticipate.

* Give your son or daughter self-addressed, stamped envelopes or post cards, so they can drop you a line without much effort.

* Let your child experience college independently, but be there to hold the safety net. Even though your children may not express it, they are probably missing you as much as you miss them.

* Finally, don’t ask to join the PTA.