Freshman College Programs - Caring or Coddling?

My husband and I, like many couples, have different parenting styles. He tends to be more strict, I tend to be more relaxed; he is more reserved with his physical affection towards our children, while I slobber kisses all over them like an oversized Newfoundland puppy. He tends to push our children harder to achieve things than I do, while I tend to be their eternally optimistic cheerleader. He believes that occasionally allowing them to experience failure and frustration helps them to build character and teaches them about overcoming difficulties. I believe that, too, really, I do, but I cave like an over-roasted marshmallow at the sight of their disappointments. This divergence in parenting styles and philosophies among parents is not uncommon. In fact, on a larger scale, one can almost see parents’ different styles, particularly those skewing toward the creampuffy, beginning to wield some influence on the planning and execution of college programs for freshmen.

Take, for instance, the latest trends being designed especially for freshmen at colleges such as Vanderbilt University, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and the University of Maine. These programs zero in on freshmen as a college population particularly at risk for such behaviors as dropping out, failure, substance abuse, and depression. After all, moving away from Mommy and Daddy for the first time and having to deal with nasty college professors, copious amounts of homework, and obnoxious roommates can be very difficult. So colleges are aiming to take the sting out of that first difficult year by offering panaceas such as residential areas that are freshmen-only; faculty-planned events such as ice cream socials or hikes with the professors; town hall meetings; and freshmen support networks.

To a softhearted, overprotective mother like me, that sounds just swell. So what is the problem? Take my own freshman year, for example: my first night at college, my parents dropped me off at my dorm, hugged me, and left. When the reality of being alone hit me, a small-town girl suddenly abandoned at an enormous state college, I was panicked and afraid. I spent the first few weeks at school in a daze trying to absorb the enormity of my decision. I bet you think I’m going to say that I wish I’d had access myself to one of these new supportive programs, don’t you? Well, I’m not.

What happened after the first few weeks? Exactly what is supposed to happen: I adjusted. I learned how to make friends all over again; I figured out how to get where I needed to go without a car or a chauffeur; I worked on building a relationship with my professors that allowed me to get the help I needed in my classes while still maintaining a formal student-teacher dynamic; I learned how to negotiate with my noisy neighbors and how to handle it when my roommate wanted some "alone time" with her libidinous boyfriend. I adjusted.

Were those difficult days for me? Yes; unequivocally and resoundingly, yes. But those first few weeks laid the groundwork for the remaining four years of my undergraduate studies. They helped me learn independence; they fostered a sense of achievement and accomplishment in me that I’d never felt before. They helped me stretch those familial ties and begin to figure out who I was apart from my parents, apart from a mother or father mentoring me through every minute of my day—in short, those first few weeks helped me begin to make the final transition from childhood to adulthood. It is that transition that is in jeopardy when colleges start pandering to helicopter parents (such as I imagine I myself will be one day) and inviting students to milk-and-cookie sit-ins with their professors as a substitute for freshmen students getting out there and figuring things out for themselves.

We all love our children, and we all want them to succeed, and it is always difficult to watch our children fail at something at which they so desperately want to succeed. But part of being a good parent and raising a child to be a strong, independent, resourceful adult, involves knowing when it is time to let our children stand on their own two feet.

When my children were first learning how to walk, they tried and fell, tried and fell. Their tiny tears of frustration and pain at not being able to take those first steps were real, and for me, they were heartwrenching, but I would not have done them any favors if, to spare them that pain, I had carried them everywhere. They would never have learned to walk.

Nobody wants to see their children suffer, but there is a quote from the Bible that is relevant to this particular parental fear: "Rejoice in our suffering; suffering produces perserverance, perserverance character, and character hope." What are we giving to our children by keeping them children for longer? Are we building in them a hope for what they can accomplish with their lives, or are we teaching them that it is better to be carried than to learn to walk on their own?

Some may say that it is easy for me to say this because my children are still too young for me to have to worry about those first few heartbreaking weeks of college, and I can’t deny it. Who knows how I will respond if one day it is my daughter sobbing over the phone or one of my sons failing a class? I hope that I will have the presence of mind and the intestinal fortitude to remember what the purpose of college is: to prepare my children for the "real world" which awaits them, a world where bosses will not encourage them to come by for milk and cookies and a Wii session when they’ve missed a critical deadline; a world where their coworkers may be unpleasant or smell bad or be downright rude and there’s nothing they can do about it; a world where getting lost means they’ve got to figure out how to get home on their own.

In the meantime, I will continue to smother my children with kisses and hugs, knowing all the while that someday soon I will have to pull back and watch them take a new set of first frightening, tentative steps toward adulthood without me holding their hands, without me hovering over their every move. I think I might be able to manage that—then again, maybe the schools should save some milk and cookies for me.