they need practice in making mistakes and recovering, and in owning the outcomes of their choices. They don’t arrive in college fully formed as adults, but we hope they will use these years to make significant progress toward adult behavior, with all the support and safety nets that college can offer. Yet my research with Abigail Sullivan Moore, reported in our book, shows that many college students are in frequent contact with their parents—nearly twice daily, on average— and that frequency of contact is related to lower autonomy. Parents who are using technology (calls, Skype, texting, e-mail, Facebook, etc.) to micromanage lives from afar may be thwarting the timely passage to adulthood. Not surprisingly, these college students are also not likely to see themselves as adults, nor fully prepared to take the responsibilities of their actions, nor even getting the benefits of college that they and their parents are paying for. One in five students in our study report parents are editing and proofing their papers, for example. College parents can help with the transition by serving as a sounding board rather than being directive, by steering their college-age kids to campus resources for help, by considering long-range goals rather than short-term ones and by giving their “kids” space to grow up.
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