Aug. 8, 2025
From Helicopter to Helper: Navigating Your Child's College Transition and Beyond
Send us a text Growing up doesn't end at 18—it's just beginning. Dr. Sarah Klein, Vice President for Student Affairs at Stevens Institute of Technology, delivers a powerful message about the college transition that resonates far beyond freshman year: parents need to back off. After decades of helicopter parenting from preschool through high school, many parents struggle to step back when their children enter college. We've become accustomed to tracking every aspect of our children's lives—fr...
Growing up doesn't end at 18—it's just beginning. Dr. Sarah Klein, Vice President for Student Affairs at Stevens Institute of Technology, delivers a powerful message about the college transition that resonates far beyond freshman year: parents need to back off.
After decades of helicopter parenting from preschool through high school, many parents struggle to step back when their children enter college. We've become accustomed to tracking every aspect of our children's lives—from daily school reports to real-time location apps. But this well-intentioned involvement can sabotage the very independence our adult children need to develop.
Dr. Klein shares several specific strategies for parents navigating this transition. She recommends avoiding campus visits during the critical first six weeks, allowing students to manage homesickness and roommate conflicts themselves, and establishing clear communication boundaries instead of expecting constant contact. When students call upset, parents should listen without immediately solving problems—empowering young adults to develop their own solutions.
What makes this conversation so valuable is how these principles extend beyond college. Whether your child is 18 or 38, the fundamental challenge remains the same: how do we support without suffocating? How do we love without controlling? As Dr. Klein eloquently puts it, "Allow your child to grow into the adult that you want them to be... the way that you love them as an adult is different."
The most profound gift we can give our adult children isn't solving their problems or protecting them from discomfort—it's believing in their capacity to navigate life's challenges independently while remaining a steady, supportive presence in their lives. Ready to transform your relationship with your adult child? Start by biting your tongue and taking a step back.
Huge thank you to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer.
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00:00 - Welcome to Bite Your Tongue
02:27 - Introduction with Sarah Klein
04:16 - Evolution of Parental Involvement
10:07 - Give Them Six Weeks
14:14 - Setting Boundaries and Communication
18:45 - Growing Into Adulthood
21:12 - Final Thoughts and Call to Action
WEBVTT
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Parents are so obsessed with their students going to college to get a great job and the return on investment and that whole bit, which is really important, of course, but from my end, it's also about the development of a character and the development of adulthood, you know, and becoming an adult, and so, for a parent, they need to learn that that's another essential part of this and that they need to step back for that to be able to occur.
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Hey everyone, welcome to Bite your Tongue, the podcast.
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Join me, your host, Denise Gorin, as we explore the ins and outs of building healthy relationships with our adult children.
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Together, we'll speak with experts, share heartfelt stories and get timely advice addressing topics that matter most to you.
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Get ready to dive deep and learn to build and nurture deep connections with our adult children and, of course, when, to bite our tongues.
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So let's get started.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Bite your Tongue, the podcast.
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I'm Denise and today I've asked my sister, Connie, here she is, to join us.
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You know she's our podcast editor and certainly a behind-the-scenes genius, but she's going to join us for a bit, just to talk about this episode and what we're getting into today.
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Okay, I know I prefer hiding behind the headphones.
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However, when you call me genius, I don't mind being here.
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The topic today is great, something we've both been through, that's true.
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We're going to talk about a pretty emotional milestone when you take your kids to college.
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I know some listeners are past this, but some are just starting to listen and this is the phase they're in.
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Remember those days when it was so hard to say goodbye and really let go.
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Oh gosh, denise, do I ever?
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I tried to act so calm and cool and yet I was so nervous.
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Is he going to like his roommate?
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Are they going to get along?
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What clubs are you going to join?
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All that crazy stuff.
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All that crazy stuff.
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When you?
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look back, it sounds crazy now what certainly wasn't crazy back then, Absolutely.
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But anyway, it's a very short episode but it packs a big punch.
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We're going to be joined by Sarah Klein.
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She's from the Stevens Institute of Technology and she has two words, Connie, for parents who take their kids to college.
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Back off.
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Oh whoa, she doesn't mince words, well, especially when you're writing the paycheck, when you're paying the tuition check, absolutely yeah.
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So she's got a strong case and she explains why stepping back is usually the best gift you can give your college bound kid.
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So let's get started.
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Thanks for joining me, connie.
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Sounds good.
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Let's get started with Sarah.
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Today, as we mentioned, we're talking about sending your adult child off to college for the first time.
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Now I know many of you are past this stage, but some are just beginning this journey.
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As we spoke with Sarah today, I realized, though, that everything she says is also practical advice for all of us trying to build healthy relationships with our adult children.
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In two words, back off.
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And it doesn't stop once you drop them off at college.
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So we're delighted to welcome Dr Sarah Klein, vice president for student affairs at Stevens Institute of Technology.
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At Stevens Institute of Technology, sarah has spent years in the world of campus life and student affairs and has seen firsthand how this tradition to college has changed so much over the years and the over-involvement of parents.
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She's passionate about helping families navigate this pivotal moment.
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This will be a short but practical conversation where Sarah will outline some do's and don'ts during this major milestone.
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Welcome, sarah.
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Thanks for having me.
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Tell me a little bit more about you, and I know you've been talking about it for years.
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What prompted this interest for you?
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Yeah, in my role at Stevens, I'm responsible for facilitating a transformative experience for our students while they're here.
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I oversee a large division at the university.
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We have 16 offices that all work together and across the university to welcome students, help them feel supported, guide them and really develop them intellectually, emotionally, socially as they navigate this college journey.
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And we're really there with them from the first day they arrive to the day they graduate and beyond as alumni, and we really want to teach them how to self-advocate and how to grow into a responsible, adult and engaged citizen.
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That's the goal.
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And sometimes the parents, the handicap huh.
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Sometimes that's true.
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Yeah, I'm always interested in working with parents.
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I think that over the course of my career I've seen a huge change in parents' level of involvement in the student experience.
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Can you go into specifics about that?
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Yeah, I think it's a generational change.
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I don't think it's any particular thing that has happened.
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I think it's the way that society parents, that we teach our people to parent, that the generations have changed their parenting style.
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So, if you look at it, this generation of parents has been intricately involved with every moment of their child's life, from the day they dropped them, maybe at daycare or at preschool, you get a report of every single hour, every single diaper.
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That was changed.
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What they ate, right.
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So we're starting from that place of being so embedded in every moment and their child having no independent moment where they're not aware of what's happening.
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And that really progresses through the entire K through 12 school system, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.
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Schools are much more communicative than when I was a child.
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Parents are receiving newsletters.
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I have a high schooler myself and I receive a daily newsletter of what's happening at school.
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You say you don't think that's so bad.
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I remember none of this was going on.
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My kids are older and I remember when my daughter went to high school we started to have this thing where their grades would get posted or they didn't turn in a high school homework assignment.
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I thought that was a little over the top.
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It was more about saving the schools.
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I don't want to say ass, because if this kid got an F the parent would say well, why didn't you ever tell me Right?
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This is just not college, sarah.
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This podcast is about way into young adulthood 30s, even early 40s and parents are still overly involved.
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I think that there's a range of parents, right.
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So I think there are a range of parents and a range of children.
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I think there are some children I'm fortunate to have children who don't need me to have a newsletter or read it, but there are a lot of parents out there who do need that because their child really struggles and they do need to advocate for them more, especially when they're in the K-12 system and a minor right.
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What the problem for me is is that those adults cannot step away from their child a bit when they move to college to allow for the process to begin, where they learn how to self-advocate.
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So I do think there are more children identified earlier who have higher need, who need more intervention from other people, the adults in their lives, and that's why I think it's okay that we do some of this and I do think it's good.
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There are a lot of parents out there who are disengaged in their child's life and education.
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So I think it's good if it helps for some of those cases, but I think actually most parents do not need that and do not need to be involved.
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But you as a parent can determine how you want to act on that or if you want to act on that information.
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I do not.
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I stay out, but for some people they need to provide a little more care and attention to their student and push them a bit when they're younger.
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My concern is that by the time they get to college, the entire point of being here is that, yes, there is a safety net of the college administration and all the networks within the college to help them succeed, but ultimately they're supposed to be self-directed and doing that for themselves, and so if they're graduating, they haven't had the opportunity to really do it for themselves.
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And so if they're graduating, they haven't had the opportunity to really do it for themselves because their parent is quite literally logging into their email or their university software to act for them and on behalf of them, then we have a problem, because then they haven't actually had any time to hone any skills while they're in college.
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Then they're graduating and their parent is calling their employer to negotiate a job offer right, or they still are making doctor appointments for their children, which is a real issue.
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So how do you change from sort of this involvement in high school and getting your weekly newsletter and checking your grades?
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Maybe you do have a child that needs that extra support and now you drop them off at college.
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It's pretty hard to just slam dunk I'm done.
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What's your down and dirty suggestions?
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for parents.
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Yeah, I think it's hard because some parents don't have any need to make a change right, they're happy with it and their child maybe loves it.
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I mean, it's great to get babied right.
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People love that.
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So I think it does have to come from both the student and the parent together.
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But from my end it also comes from me and my team.
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We do a lot of, we make a lot of outreach and we do a lot of education to incoming parents and families about what it's like to navigate a change in college and what we expect of parents and what we cannot do with parents.
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When a student's coming to college, there are changes in the law in terms of how we can interact or communicate with you.
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We have a FERPA law which protects student privacy because they are, for the most part, 18 years old.
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So we I cannot speak to every college, but I think most college administrators do seek to educate parents on these matters should they want to pay attention to us, but ultimately, if they're trying to get a certain level of information and access, they just can't have it in college.
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So it's kind of an intense moment where it's just an all-out change to how you have to interact with your students.
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So we do as much as we can.
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We do webinars, orientations over the summer, we send out communications.
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I interact with the parents and families when they arrive at the campus to talk about this, and I do a lot of one-on-one education as issues arise, to explain that it's not that we don't want to work with parents.
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It's that we all need to work together so that their child can be a successful adult, and that I need to speak with the student and not with them, and that there are legal requirements.
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I need to speak with the student, but also it's probably a good idea so that their student can grow and learn.
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Parents are so obsessed with their students going to college to get a great job and the return on investment and that whole bit, which is really important, of course, but from my end, it's also about the development of a character and the development of adulthood, you know, and becoming an adult, and so for a parent, they need to learn that that's another essential part of this and that they need to step back for that to be able to occur.
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I would love some specific tips.
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If you were talking to a group of parents right now and saying, okay, you're sending your child off to college, you're dropping them off next week.
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Here are some tips to be the best parent you can be, stay connected, but not overdo the job.
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Yes, I talk about this with parents a lot.
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I think a big thing that parents do that is an error is that they come and, depending on where their student is going to college and how far the distance is, they come here a lot.
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Not only do they come to the campus, but they also expect their student to return home pretty quickly.
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I think all colleges experience this issue, where usually orientation begins about a week before Labor Day weekend and that feels like this moment for families to celebrate together and they have traditions and there's all these things going on at home.
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A lot of families think, oh, I'm going to come pick you up Labor Day weekend and they've just been here for probably one week, five days.
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So I say this every single day on the lead up to arrival to parents and families and to students that they are not to go home.
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We have so many activities going on.
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It's way too early to leave campus.
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When students get homesick and they miss home.
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It just worsens it, it exacerbates it and it prolongs the homesickness they miss home.
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It just worsens it.
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It exacerbates it and it prolongs the homesickness when the parents keep trying to resolve it by picking them up or encouraging them to come home or bringing dinner or getting their laundry or all of those things.
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The parents really just need to have an actual break where they drop their child off and do not return to campus and do not have any in-person interaction with their child.
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I say for six weeks.
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Most administrators like that six-week time frame.
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It does take six weeks to kind of recalibrate, adjust to the college environment, meet some people and for this to start to feel like a place that could be home.
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And if you start having those in-person interactions too soon or they're going back home and just returning to a comfortable environment, it just makes it even harder for them to adjust at college.
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So really letting them stay here usually campuses, including Stevens, we intentionally plan a family weekend or a family day that's about six weeks in, for that exact reason.
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So that's a great time to have a first interaction, or maybe Thanksgiving.
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What advice would you give to a parent where the child is texting them or calling them?
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I can't stand it here.
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My roommate's smoking pot every day.
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I got to get out of here.
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This is saddest I've ever been.
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Would you want the parent to call you at that point, or who should they call?
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So that comes into another piece of advice I have, which is to really try to be a good listener and not be the proactive problem solver.
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Solver.
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Right Like you need to.
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Your job is to just be a resource.
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Sit back, hear it all.
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It might be hard right Like you need to.
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Your job is to just be a resource.
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Sit back, hear it all.
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It might be hard right.
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Internally, you're sitting there saying, oh my God, my kid is away for the first time.
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They're crying, they're unhappy, they don't love their roommate All that is normal, right?
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You're not going to come here and just love everything immediately.
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It's a whole new life that you're establishing.
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It's tough, so, being a good listener and realizing that your child is another adult at this point and it's different now and they have to figure it out.
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So, empowering them, asking questions to help them figure it out, asking how they've already tried to solve it, who have they already talked to on campus trying to help connect them to the resources?
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I actually don't think a parent should call at that time.
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I think that that's on the parent to interact with their child and encourage their child to do everything they can proactively and also just to be patient.
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Some of these things just do take time, but often I find that when parents call too early with complaints like that, it's that the student actually hasn't done anything proactive to try to meet other students or try to solve the roommate problem or talk to the RA.
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There's so many low-hanging fruit things that could happen during that time that never happen, usually before I get the call.
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So I always urge you to take a deep breath.
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You probably don't need to call yet, right?
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Parents should call us if there's some sort of a real emergency.
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Their student is in danger, their student is thinking about hurting themselves or other people.
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That is always a time to make a call to the college.
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There are also times when you can call about homesickness or lack of friends, etc.
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When you feel like all of the other avenues have been exercised and your student has already tried to do something on their own.
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Because that is the first question every administrator will ask when you call what has your student already done?
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Why is your student not coming to talk to me?
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And it's not anything personal to the parent.
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It's not that we don't mind speaking with parents.
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It's just that we're here to work with students and to develop them, and so they need to take some initiative.
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So I think when the student's calling upset, don't just run to pick up the phone.
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Take a moment, be a good listener.
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No-transcript.
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That makes perfect sense.
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And hey, parents listening, that goes way into your adulthood when the kid calls and they can't make their rent.
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Exactly Okay.
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So if you have anything else that you think is really important to offer us, let's hear it.
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I think it's also important for parents to just keep their expectations in check about how it's going to go that first year.
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It can be tumultuous.
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A first year of college it is a huge life adjustment as they're becoming an adult.
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They may fail classes, they may have a hard time making friends, they may not like the college they chose or feel like they want to change their major, which maybe is something they always thought they would want to do.
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It's going to happen, it's expected and normal.
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So for you not to have an overdramatic reaction in response to it is probably helpful, because it feels unsupportive, even though you're just worried.
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I think a lot of what parents are doing is they're just feeling anxious because they want their child to be so successful, which makes sense, right, of course.
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But by you being anxious, you are just worsening the problem, so allowing a space to have mistakes happen, because they are going to happen and we expect that to happen.
00:15:16.702 --> 00:15:19.009
And this is the testing ground.
00:15:19.009 --> 00:15:29.323
This is where they can try things out, and that's what they're supposed to be doing in college is trying different classes, trying different relationships and friendships and then figuring out what kind of person that they want to be based on.
00:15:29.323 --> 00:15:30.326
How those things go.
00:15:30.447 --> 00:15:36.029
It's a trial and error situation, so parents need to understand that that's going to be expected and it's very normal.
00:15:36.029 --> 00:15:41.143
But I also would say too, as I mentioned before, know that there are some moments to step in.
00:15:41.143 --> 00:15:46.525
So I don't want to make this all about stay back, let your child be independent, because I think for the most part, that is the rule.
00:15:46.525 --> 00:16:02.405
But there are some students who just need extra help, who are really faltering, and then that's the moment when we, as the administrators of the institution, are looking to a parent to partner with us and help us to ensure that their student is safe and healthy, and sometimes we do need the parent to help us.
00:16:03.989 --> 00:16:05.352
Okay, this is really interesting.
00:16:05.352 --> 00:16:07.245
You should be a coach for parents of adult kids.
00:16:07.245 --> 00:16:12.148
Your kid got into their very favorite school and all your friends are saying how's Sally doing it?
00:16:12.187 --> 00:16:12.849
might not be great.
00:16:12.849 --> 00:16:15.142
It might not be great, but anyway okay.
00:16:15.142 --> 00:16:18.267
Yeah, I think also it's important to set boundaries.
00:16:18.267 --> 00:16:31.546
Something we often experience is an inconsistency in terms of what parents expect about how often they're going to receive communication and information from their student and they're calling us because they're feeling like desperate, like my student is missing.
00:16:31.546 --> 00:16:31.980
They're not.
00:16:31.980 --> 00:16:33.788
They haven't texted back in 24 hours.
00:16:33.788 --> 00:16:38.511
You know parents all have the track, your student's location app.
00:16:38.511 --> 00:16:42.299
They'll say, wait, my student's supposed to be in class and I see they're not in class.
00:16:42.441 --> 00:16:44.033
Ok, do all parents have that?
00:16:44.033 --> 00:16:44.778
Do all parents have that?
00:16:45.221 --> 00:16:46.788
I think most parents have that at this point.
00:16:46.788 --> 00:16:48.846
Most parents think over-parenting.
00:16:48.846 --> 00:16:54.293
They're logging in on their student's email account and sending emails to me as the student sometimes.
00:16:54.293 --> 00:16:58.528
So I think those things needs to be discussed between the student and the parent.
00:16:58.528 --> 00:17:00.033
And this is for students out there.
00:17:00.033 --> 00:17:02.067
I'm just going to say please don't give your parents your passwords.
00:17:02.067 --> 00:17:02.909
Why are you doing that?
00:17:04.359 --> 00:17:05.625
You're enabling them.
00:17:05.625 --> 00:17:07.748
Well, it could be that the parents demand it.
00:17:07.748 --> 00:17:11.605
I'm not giving you the cell phone unless you give me the password I'm sure that's out there.
00:17:11.605 --> 00:17:17.673
My guess is that any student would not give their parent the password, openly or without.
00:17:17.673 --> 00:17:19.083
Yes, yeah, there's no way.
00:17:19.625 --> 00:17:23.708
I'd like to think not, but some students I think kind of like that their parents come in and do it for them.
00:17:23.708 --> 00:17:29.511
Again, it's nice to have someone do it for you, but I do think there's often a disconnect in the communication piece.
00:17:29.511 --> 00:17:31.767
You know students, once they get here they get really busy.
00:17:31.767 --> 00:17:33.070
Like orientation is a great example.
00:17:33.070 --> 00:17:43.344
Parents are used to having texting, texting with their child and talking to them all the time and suddenly three days into orientation they haven't heard from their kid and they're contacting us to say I am very concerned.
00:17:43.344 --> 00:17:45.335
And then we contact the student and then they say I'm busy.
00:17:45.335 --> 00:17:46.780
Right, I'm in the middle of something.
00:17:46.780 --> 00:17:48.707
I can't just text my parent all the time.
00:17:48.707 --> 00:17:58.636
So I like to tell students and parents and this shows my age, but I say you know, what I did in college was I set up a time every Sunday at 8 pm Right, right, that's what we did.
00:17:58.737 --> 00:18:01.184
Well, when I was in college, you lined up at the phone.
00:18:01.224 --> 00:18:03.996
There was one phone in the hallway, I know about this.
00:18:03.996 --> 00:18:12.807
Yes, I didn't have cell phones either in college, so I know, and we just set up the one time and then there was no expectation that I was communicating at any other time.
00:18:12.807 --> 00:18:24.326
Now I know that was before a time when we just texted everyone all the time, so maybe it's a different setup but some sort of a check-in point right, so that, yes, your parent knows you're not missing, yes, you're just busy, you have a lot of exams, right.
00:18:25.040 --> 00:18:35.048
But those kinds of things, and even parents showing up on campus without telling their student and expecting to see them I mean, parents don't realize we can't even let them into the residence hall or telling them where a student lives.
00:18:35.048 --> 00:18:45.785
We have privacy law and they'll sometimes come here and be shocked that no one can let them in, even though they're paying, however much they're paying, and that their student isn't available to see them right now.
00:18:45.785 --> 00:18:53.211
Sometimes a student is out doing something else, didn't sleep in their room last night and that's really, I think, an invasion of privacy.
00:18:53.211 --> 00:19:03.315
So I talk to parents a lot about remember, this is another adult and I know it's hard to think of your child as an adult, but they are now and there was a clear break the day that you dropped them here.
00:19:04.800 --> 00:19:11.806
So you say, yeah, you drop them off, they're adults, they go home and they're back to be in there, particularly that first year of college.
00:19:11.806 --> 00:19:15.382
But I still remember onward I would drop my clothes in my bedroom.
00:19:15.382 --> 00:19:16.182
You revert back.
00:19:16.182 --> 00:19:17.845
A lot of people say that's very true.
00:19:17.845 --> 00:19:19.327
So it's hard to see that adult.
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