Anxious Parents Are the Ones Who Need Help

If you’re the parent of a child who’s left home for college or will be on the way there soon, Mathilde Ross would like a word. As a senior staff psychiatrist at Boston University Health Services, Ross counsels students through problems big and small but argues in a guest essay this week that increasingly it’s the parents who need the help.

These parents, awash in the dire statistics about adolescent mental health in this country, have been conditioned to panic at the slightest sign of distress — and it’s not doing anyone any favors.

Consider the fact that some parents have gotten so anxious about anxiety that they even worry when their child isn’t feeling bad, Ross writes. The parents then encourage their student to see a counselor to make sure the adjustment to college is going OK. “If the student says she’s fine, the parents worry that she isn’t being forthright,” Ross says.

And so, Ross has some advice for the grown-ups: “The first thing I’d like to say, and I mean it in the kindest possible way, is: Get a grip.”

Not that she isn’t sympathetic. In 2022, nearly 14 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds reported having serious thoughts about suicide. And as a parent of two teens myself, I know how hard it is to unwind my hands.

But Ross reminds us that it’s normal for our children — for all of us — to experience a certain amount of anxiety, especially when starting a new life away from home. And it’s OK to experience negative emotions. Most kids, she writes, are going to be just fine.

Parents can also remember to be parents — a mental health professional isn’t always called for — and offer the kind of common sense we’re good at. Some of Ross’s “age-appropriate remedies” include:

“If your child calls during the first weeks of college feeling anxious, consider saying any of the following: You’ll get through this; this is normal; we’ll laugh about this phone call at Thanksgiving.”

And: “If your child is having difficulty following the professor and thinks everyone in the class is smarter, consider saying, ‘Do the reading.’”

Finally, we always have that other superpower of simply listening. We just have to remember to use it.