For 18 years, parenting often involves keeping track of seemingly everything for your child: scheduling doctor appointments, sharing deadline reminders, and tracking how much clean underwear remains in their dresser. Then you drop them off at college, and everything changes.
Kirk Dougher, a clinical psychologist and associate vice chancellor for health and wellbeing at WashU, says the college transition requires parents to make a transition of their own: from managing their child’s life to coaching from the sidelines. “It’s more like stepping from a director role to more of a coaching role,” Dougher says.
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That doesn’t mean college students suddenly stop needing their parents. During the first six to nine months, Dougher says, keeping an open line of communication is critical. The goal, however, is to help students figure out what to do, rather than doing it for them.
Stop doing everything for them
College students should begin taking ownership of as many responsibilities as they reasonably can, Dougher says. That may mean scheduling their own health appointments, figuring out whom to contact when they have a problem, managing academic deadlines, and seeking out campus resources themselves.
Parents can still help. The difference is how. Rather than immediately making the phone call or solving the problem, Dougher suggests asking questions that lead students toward their own next step. The shift might be as simple as moving from I’ll take care of that to What do you think you need to do next?
Students can also call home when they don’t know what to do. Dougher just hopes the question increasingly becomes, “How do I do this?” rather than, “Can you do this for me?”
Stop assuming every phone call requires a solution
Sometimes your college student doesn’t need advice at all. Dougher learned that firsthand when his then-freshman son called while worried about an upcoming math final. Dougher immediately began troubleshooting: Had his son studied? Yes, Dad. Had he found study help? Yes, Dad. Had he tried this or that?
His son became increasingly frustrated. “What my son needed at that moment was to say, ‘It’s OK. Everybody is afraid of school,’” Dougher says. “He’d done all the right things. That’s not what he needed. He just needed some validation that it’s OK to be afraid of a final.”
His fix for parents is refreshingly straightforward: Before launching into solutions, ask what your student wants from the conversation. “What is it that you need from me right now?” Dougher suggests. “Could I be more helpful if I was listening, or are you calling to ask for guidance?”
Stop treating homesickness like an emergency
The miserable phone call will probably come. Your student doesn’t have friends yet. Everyone else seems happier. College doesn’t feel the way they expected. They want to come home.
Dougher says parents should first remember that homesickness is normal. “When you go through a transition, you’re going to long for the stability and the predictability of what was,” he says.
Social media can make that adjustment especially difficult. Students know every detail of their own loneliness or uncertainty while seeing carefully curated snapshots of classmates seemingly thriving. “They’re comparing their known experience to the greatest hits of their colleagues,” Dougher says.
Parents can validate that homesickness without immediately trying to remove it. Ask what they’ve tried. Encourage them to attend residence hall activities, explore student organizations, accept invitations, and give friendships time to develop. College, Dougher notes, isn’t always like the movies, where an instant group of lifelong friends magically appears outside the dorm room.
He recalls another parent giving an introverted student a particularly useful rule for the first six months: If someone asks you to do something, say yes. Lunch? Yes. Study together? Yes. Go to a game? Yes.
The larger point is that connection often requires students to actively put themselves in situations where relationships can form. And parents should be careful not to communicate that their student is too fragile to handle the discomfort, Dougher adds.
“You can do this,” Dougher suggests reminding them. “You’ve made friends before. It doesn’t happen all at once.”
Stop checking Life360 every five minutes
If you can still see exactly where your college student is, Dougher isn’t necessarily telling you to delete the app. He does, however, recommend examining what you’re getting out of it. “Typically, that just exacerbates the parents’ anxiety,” he says.
And if that anxiety turns into questions such as Why were you there? Who were you with? Why weren’t you back at your dorm?, location sharing can quickly become surveillance. That also gives students a pretty good incentive to stop sharing their location.
Tracking itself is neither inherently good nor bad, Dougher says. What matters is whether parents use the information to interfere with the independence that their student is supposed to be developing.
Stop counting phone calls
There is no correct number of times a college student should call home. Dougher once heard a student tell a room full of parents that he talked to his mother “all the time.” When a parent pressed him for an actual number, the student clarified: about once a month.
The parents were horrified. But Dougher says families develop very different rhythms. First-year students may communicate frequently and gradually call less as they become more settled. Other families might happily exchange texts every day.
Rather than guessing, talk about it, Dougher says. Parents can tell their student they’d like to stay involved in their life without becoming another obligation, then ask how often it feels good to connect.
And when you do get them on the phone, resist the urge to stretch the conversation until every possible question has been answered.
Dougher recommends even occasionally hanging up while everyone still has a little more to say. “If you have them feeling like they were wanting a little bit more from the phone call, a little more time, a little more discussion, that’s not always so bad,” he says.
Don’t wait until things get bad to suggest mental health support
Giving students independence doesn’t mean ignoring signs they’re struggling. But Dougher says parents and students alike should reconsider the idea that counseling is reserved for crises. “If you’re thinking about it, if you’ve thought about it, it’s time to go in and get some help,” he says.
Today’s students are increasingly comfortable seeking counseling for what Dougher calls “right-sized problems,” before difficulties become overwhelming.
Again, he recommends that parents coach rather than command. Instead of You need to see a therapist, try such questions as: What have you tried? What other options have you considered? Do you know what resources are available on campus? That allows students to recognize and access help themselves, another skill they’ll need long after college.
Stop expecting the same kid to come home for the holidays
Eventually, your newly independent college student will return home. That can be when things get interesting.
For months, they’ve decided when to sleep, eat, study, socialize, and come home. Then they walk back into their childhood house, where parents may automatically expect them to follow the same rules they had senior year of high school.
“Parents need to start that preparation the day that they drop the student off,” Dougher says.
Parents naturally “default to the settings when they last lived with that child,” he explains. Before Thanksgiving or another extended break, he recommends thinking deliberately about which old expectations may no longer fit.
A high school curfew, for example, might become a request that your student simply tell you where they’re going and when they expect to return.
The point isn’t to abandon household expectations; it’s to acknowledge that the person returning home has spent several months practicing adulthood.
“You’ve grown. You’ve changed. Things are different,” Dougher says. “You’re used to being on your own. Maybe we can renegotiate a little bit what it means to be part of this family unit.”
Stop rescuing them from every “pink sock” moment
Perhaps the hardest part of parenting a college student is figuring out when a problem is actually big enough to require your help. Dougher points to an analogy that WashU Chancellor Andrew Martin has shared with parents: the “pink sock” moment.
Your student does a load of laundry, accidentally tosses something red in with the whites, and ends up with pink socks. It’s a mistake. It may be frustrating. But it’s also a problem that they can solve on their own.
“Most things students experience here are pink sock moments,” Dougher says. “Occasionally, they have something that’s beyond their capacity to be able to manage.”
The challenge for parents is learning to tell the difference. Dougher says the question isn’t simply whether a situation worries you, but whether your student actually needs you to intervene. Giving them room to work through smaller problems can help them build the confidence and skills they’ll need to handle bigger ones later.
Dougher knows that can be easier said than done. He has four children of his own and remembers worrying about whether his oldest son was ready when he left for college. But as his son began navigating life on his own, Dougher realized his role had changed, too.
“He didn’t need me leading the way,” Dougher says. “He needed me cheering from the background. That’s the same with most students.”
