The Changing Role for Parents of College Students

If you’re the parent (or soon-to-be parent) of a college-age student, you are all too aware of how your daughter or son has changed over the years. From that cute baby way back when, to a young adult now, your child has gone through a lot of changes over the years…and so have you. Along the way, you’ve loved, nurtured, directed, instructed, corrected, and coached your child. Your role as a parent has likely changed as your child has matured. And, hopefully, you are ready to take another step in how you parent as your son or daughter moves further down the road toward becoming an independent and functioning adult. How you parent during this stage of life will go a long way to determining whether your child will enter their adult lives dragging their feet or sailing into it with the wind at their backs.

Become an Advisor
Simply said, the goal of parenting is to produce an independent, functioning, and God-honoring adult. With this in mind, the role of a parent with a child in college should change to become advisory in capacity: to provide lots of support, encouragement, and when needed, accountability. During this stage of adolescence, young adults want to begin to stretch their wings of independence. They want to call their shots. This is the time for parents to learn the delicate art of diplomacy. Your young adult won’t want your opinion about every aspect of their life. They won’t want to text you every night before they go to bed (if they go to bed). They won’t ask for permission on their upcoming weekend plans. While there will be appropriate times for weighing in on your son or daughter’s life issues, the significant change in this life phase is that when they want your advice and counsel, they’ll ask for it. Ask God to give you wisdom for knowing when to hold your tongue and when to speak up.

How this change to an advisory role works out in real life depends largely upon the groundwork you’ve laid up until now. Parents who have maintained a high degree of control over their teenager during the high school years will have a different experience than the parents who have slowly but steadily allowed their child to become more independent. The point for parents to focus on, regardless of previous parenting styles, is to help their daughter or son make a successful transition to the more independent lifestyle students experience on college campuses.

Yeah, But We’re Paying Big Bucks for College…
If you are one of the many parents who help finance your child’s college education, it’s appropriate that you maintain a closer watch over academic performance than you otherwise would if your young adult independently finances his or her education apart from your help. Still, there’s a fine line to walk here. Don’t try to micromanage your child’s education as she or he needs to learn the key adult skills involved in managing her or his own life. As painful as this process might be for you, it includes lessons your young adult will learn from the consequences of poor choices.

On the other hand, you’re making a financial investment in your child’s life, so you won’t want to throw tens of thousands of dollars down the drain on behalf of a student who doesn’t take academic responsibilities seriously. Again, I know it’s a fine line, but you’ll need to learn how to walk it gracefully.

Perhaps the best thing you can do in this area is to work together with your son or daughter to negotiate and establish appropriate educational and behavioral expectations regarding the college experience as well as consequences for consistently not meeting those agreed-upon expectations. Under the right circumstances, one such consequence might include cutting off financing.

The idea behind establishing expectations and consequences isn’t to maintain control or evoke obedience to you but to ensure a reasonable amount of accountability for your financial investment.

Academic Expectations
Let’s face it, not all kids are equally good academically. Not all kids can pull straight As in college no matter how hard they apply themselves academically. Part of your job as the parent of a college student is to apply wisdom in determining what reasonable academic expectations should be for your son or daughter and finding the right balance between providing the encouragement they need and a figurative kick in the pants when necessary.

Before your child heads off to college, if you know that they will find it difficult to adapt to the rigors of college academics, make sure you have conversations with your young adult about this issue. If they need help with acquiring improved study skills or habits, for example, help them chart out a plan for building the skills they need or for becoming a more disciplined student. While not every potential academic challenge can be handled completely before your student begins college, your role is to help evaluate likely challenges and encourage them to be proactive in addressing them.

Living at Home With Your College Student
While many young adults leave home to attend college, some students will attend a nearby school and make the choice to live at home when they embark on their college journey. If your son or daughter lives at home while they attend college, you’ll need to make some adjustments to your living arrangement that otherwise would be part of your daughter’s or son’s experience if they were away from home living on campus.

Remember your parenting goal. You want your child to become an adult. When your son or daughter attends college but still lives at home, now is the time to revisit and renegotiate living expectations. Give your live-at-home college student some extra space. Make it easier for them to spread their wings and learn to fly.

Still, don’t remove all expectations from your young adult while they live at home. After all, if your young adult were living on campus, they would still have some life responsibilities in addition to their education such as handling finances, laundry, and meals. So, make sure that your live-at-home college student will still have some of these types of responsibilities.

Home for Breaks and Summer Vacations
If your young adult lives on campus, of course, they’ll be returning home from time to time for school breaks and, most likely, summer vacation. Much of what has been written above regarding college students who live at home year-round also applies here, particularly regarding summer break. But there are some unique distinctions for parenting when the student who lives away at college returns home on break.

When students come home from college on break or for summer vacation, parents may anticipate family life quickly returning to the good old days gone by. But wise parents will recognize that once a child goes away to college, family life will never return to the way it was before. This isn’t good or bad in and of itself, but it is the way it is and part of the process of your child becoming an adult.

After returning home, (and once your daughter or son wakes up from their “big sleep” that invariably follows,) parents may have as much as 48 hours before their young adult has had enough “family time.” Most will quickly want to reconnect with old friends they haven’t seen for a while. They’ll want to get out, revisit old haunts and hangouts, put away their student role, and have some fun. This is completely natural. My advice: don’t overly build up college break times as your exclusive time to spend with your young adult. If you get lots of quality time with your son or daughter, then rejoice. But don’t expect it.

It’s All About Relationships and Influence
As your child becomes an adult, letting go can be painful, but it doesn’t have to be. Your perspective in this season of life can make all of the difference. So, rather than mourning it as the end of a parenting season, try to look at it as an open door to a new season.

As a parent, you still matter. In fact, in some ways, you’ve never mattered more. But what it means to be a parent and what you do as a parent must change. Now, it will be all about your relationship with your young adult and the subtle, but very real influence you continue to have in his or her life during their adult years. Never underestimate your role. It’s not about control anymore; it’s about befriending, caring, loving, supporting, and being an on-call mentor to your daughter or son. And as your child heads off to their college adventure, you can lay a healthy foundation for a close-knit adult-to-adult relationship that can be a legacy for you and a blessing for your son or daughter for decades to come.