Home for the Holidays: How to Handle Your New Adult, Home from College

One of the hardest challenges for a college freshman isn't necessarily being away from home; that usually gets easier with each passing day, with each new friend. It isn't being away from home, it's going back.

Here's how it pans out. The average college freshman moves into the dorms, and away from Mom and Dad's watchful, concerned eyes, at the end of August. They are nervous, unsure of their surroundings, unsure how to make new friends until the first meeting with the other residents of their hall where they see all of the other freshmen who are going through the same thing. "Maybe this won't be so bad," they think. After the meeting, a kindly older student gathers up a handful of said freshmen and directs them to the nearest fraternity house throwing a "Welcome Back" party. As the semester continues, the freshmen become more secure in their surroundings and comfortable with their newfound freedom.

By December when the winter break roles around, they have discovered a whole different world without the watchful and concerned eyes of their parents and they go home for a month with the family...Where Mom reminds them of their 12:00 curfew! "Curfew? Midnight? Mom, the party's barely getting STARTED at midnight!"

Being back home after three months at school with no one to answer to is tough - on both sides. And it gets harder - on both sides - with each return trip home. But there are things that both the parents and their offspring can do to make the transition from teenager to adult much easier. Because, let's face it, they went away a teenager and came back an adult, even if their age does still end in "teen," and want to be treated as such.

Freedom is one of the biggest obstacles that parents and their college students face. While they are away at school, the student gets used to coming and going as they please, eating when and whatever they please, staying up all night studying or watching movies, drinking beer (Yes, Mom, your 18 year old may be drinking beer when they are away from home...it's illegal, you taught them better than that, it happens). Now they are home and having to answer to you, tell you where they are going, when they are coming home, call if they are going to be late.

"They did this all four months ago, before they were college students, what's the big deal now?" you ask. The big deal now is that they have realized that "old enough to vote" and "old enough to serve in the military" also means "old enough to make their own decisions" and "old enough to voluntarily live in a disaster zone." And they cannot, to save their souls, figure out why you can't make that same connection. This is just as frustrating for them as it is for you. So, communicate and compromise, make deals. You won't nag (yes, I said "nag") them about their laundry if they agree to give you a perfunctory run-down of their plans for the night. You won't nag them about coming in at all hours of the night if they agree to eat dinner with the family once a week.

And let go. On both sides, but primarily on the parents' side. You are dealing with an eighteen year old adult who can fight for his country or vote against going to war and that scares him. Becoming an adult means a whole world of things that are incomprehensible to someone who has been doing them for twenty years. When you are seventeen and living at home, Mom does your laundry - for FREE! When you are eighteen and living in the dorms, you do your laundry with spare change you've picked up off the sidewalk. It puts the whole question of what's clean and dirty into a totally new realm of understanding. Even when you get back to Mom's quarter-less washer and dryer, you have trained yourself that eating is more important than smelling like a dryer sheet so jeans get worn three or four times before making it to the laundry basket.

How to handle this? Mom, send your offspring a roll or two of quarters every month. Granted some of them are going to find their way into the hungry mouth of a junk food vending machine at two in the morning but a few of them might make it into a laundr-o-mat washer and if you're sending them the money to do it, it's almost like it's free. Johnny, take advantage of the actually free laundry service; your clothes haven't been this fresh in three months!

Laundry and curfew are just a couple of the things that are going to be strenuous when your child...your adult comes home from college for a month, or for three months in the summer, but if you work really hard to understand that they are just as frustrated as you are, maybe you can find a way to meet in the middle.