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Growing up starts with a goodbye

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By D.L. Stewart, Contributing columnist Updated 5:59 PM Friday, August 27, 2010

The tears came unexpectedly.

We had just driven our youngest son to college, a day that I had been looking forward to for several years. After helping him lug several hundred pounds of stuff up several hundred flights of stairs to his dorm room, I had given him a manly hug, reminded him to give us a phone call once in awhile and then returned to my car in the parking lot. Which is where I broke down and cried.

I’m not sure why. I had been down this road twice before. With his older brothers it had been pretty much a case of unloading their stuff, saying something about seeing them at Thanksgiving and then laying a patch of rubber as I peeled off the campus.

I suppose it was because this was our 6-foot-3 baby, the last noisemaking, clothes-dropping, refrigerator-raiding bird out of the nest. So yeah, I cried after I dropped him off.

But at least I didn’t hang around. According to an article last week in The New York Times, parents not knowing when to say goodbye after bringing their freshmen to college has become an increasingly common occurrence.

One college dean recalled the parents of a freshman who not only didn’t leave the day they dropped off their daughter, they stuck around and went to the first day of classes with her.

While that may have been an extreme example, college officials say they are seeing more and more cases of “Velcro parents” who continue to cling.

“A good deal of it has to do with the evolution of the over-involvement in our students’ lives,” another college official explained. “These are the baby-on-board parents, highly invested in their students’ success. They do a lot of living vicariously, and this is the manifestation of that.”

In reaction, some colleges have devised institutional tough-love events to save students from having to say, ”Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad. Now go away and let me grow up.”

At Iowa’s Grinnell College, move-in day is followed by an assembly where students sit on one side of the gym and parents sit on the other. When the program ends, parents are politely urged to take a hike. At some schools, printed schedules are distributed to specify when it’s time for parents to stop hugging and hit the road.

For parents who have spent a lifetime hovering over their kids, cutting the cord understandably can be a traumatic moment. But here’s my advice: Drop them off, give them a quick hug and then say goodbye.

Because the sooner you say goodbye, the sooner you can get to the car and cry your eyes out.

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com

D.L. STEWART

That’s life

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