Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years

For more than a decade, Letting Go has provided hundreds of thousands of parents with valuable insights, information, comfort, and guidance throughout the emotional and social changes of their children’s college years—from senior year in high school through college graduation.

Based on research and real-life experience, and recommended by colleges and universities around the country, Letting Go, Sixth Edition, has been updated and revised to offer even more insightful, practical, and up-to-date information—including the latest resources, updated websites, an expanded bibliography, and tips on how parents can fully tap into social media to glean more information than ever before. In this era of constant communication, this edition tackles the challenge facing parents: finding the balance between staying connected and letting go.               

• When should parents encourage independence?
• When should they intervene?
• What issues of identity and intimacy await students?
• What are normal feelings of disorientation and loneliness for students—and for parents?
• What is different about today’s college environment?
• What new concerns about safety, health and wellness, and stress will affect incoming classes?