The small Co-op supermarket on campus told the story of university Freshers drop-off day perfectly. Emotionally ragged parents paced silently behind eye-rolling teens; everyone bracing themselves for the final goodbye. I watched mums sneak vegetables into student shopping baskets and dads make distracting jokes. Everyone was tense, bracing for the end-of-childhood hug before the dreaded long drive home.
Drop-off is different for everyone, but elements of the above are common themes. It’s a bittersweet moment. I should know: as a mother of four, I’ve now done it three times. I’m also a parenting journalist specialising in adolescents, which means that over the years I have picked up some wisdom on how to make this time as seamless, and hopefully painless, as possible.
According to UCAS admissions data, this autumn there will be around a quarter of a million new students being dropped off at university; a record-breaking number, which means there will be just as many anxious parents lingering around halls on move-in day.
Looking back on our family journey, my kids are now aged 15, 19, 22 and 24; here’s what I have learned about this difficult transition. Don’t make the mistakes we made.
Buy one plate, one bowl, one knife and fork
You read that right. John Lewis is currently stocking a university starter kit that ridiculously recommends velvet hangers and a £45 Stanley Cup. They are also suggesting you buy a £60 printer (not needed; your teen will already have one in the campus library) and £100 headphones. On this third trip, we have learned to keep it simple.
We bought one of everything; pre-loved from charity shops. We handed over old towels and sheets from home. You also definitely do not need the Ikea pack; you’ll get to halls and count eight colanders, 10 frying pans and a host of other repeat buys in a tiny kitchen, which creates excess washing up for your young person.
Your teen will be forever grateful if you keep to this rule because they also hate the ritual of shopping for domestic goods. This rite of passage shop is for you, not them. And teenagers’ greatest fear, according to all the experts in adolescent mental health I regularly interview, is not fitting in. They don’t want state-of-the-art air fryers and fancy dish cloths. They want anonymous items that blend in and won’t be commented on. They’re also on the final part of the quest for autonomy, so they don’t want to seem mollycoddled or privileged. Young people that I work with as an academic tutor also told me the one-plate rule, so this advice is from the horse’s mouth. Also, make sure they have slides or slippers to move around in; teens make floors excessively grubby for some reason!
Don’t expect a long goodbye
On previous drop-offs, I wanted to help unpack, chat to other parents and students in the kitchen, make the beds and fill their shelf in the fridge. I wanted a long goodbye full of hugs and a FaceTime call as soon as we got back home, with siblings and Grandma. When we dropped my eldest off six years ago, this offer was rejected and my anxious nagging about it was unhelpful.
It made everything even more emotional and negative and I learned not to do it next time round. I stayed quiet, listened to what my teen wanted to do and trusted them to get on with it. I did take a cake for the hall’s kitchen though, even though I was warned not to, because it is such a good icebreaker.
I kept to the “no lurking” rule, which meant as soon as we dropped the boxes on the bed we had to hotfoot it out of the room. The key is not to take anything personally (a good rule for the adolescent years in general, I find).
Don’t text them asking how it is going
Your logical adult brain will wonder why texting is a no-no, but their developing teenage neurology will find this question excessively intrusive; they may see it as checking up on them or perhaps a lack of trust. If you don’t hear anything, send a picture of a beloved pet on their bed or a funny meme instead. I’ve found that usually gets a reply.
You may want to agree to a communication plan (ie. when and how often we can expect to be in contact) but explain this is to make you – not them – feel better. I asked the less communicative of my children to text on a Sunday to show me proof of life once a week but otherwise I left it to them.
Also, definitely don’t follow them or their new university friends on social media, or worse, even comment on anyone’s social media – teens tell me this is “creepy”.
Turn the location tracking off
This is a controversial one, especially given that around 67 per cent of parents in the UK track the location of their university-age children, according to a survey by Unite Students. Many will disagree with me but this is best avoided.
According to all the mental health experts, the only reason to track an 18-year-old or above is to make you not them feel safer, and we should be honest about this when we discuss tracking with them. I did have it turned on with the agreement of my first two but we won’t next time. They knew the tracking was about me finding it hard to separate from them rather than vice versa.
Looking back, I think it was a mistake because I felt more anxious in the middle of the night when I saw my teen daughter still out and about in a strange city rather than reassured by knowing where she was. In the end, I just stopped looking at it. My son is going to a London university near us so we’ve decided not to turn it on.
Let them sort their own finances and accommodation
Letting teens work things out for themselves and allowing them to fail is by far the healthiest way to support them. A 2021 study from Stanford University found that when parents frame a mistake as a learning opportunity (rather than rushing in to fix the issue), children are far more likely to develop resilience – a key life skill that we want them to have. Parents who step in rob their adolescents of confidence.
It’s easier said than done, but I have tried hard to leave the texts asking for help a couple of hours before replying, knowing that my kids will likely have worked it out themselves by that point. We didn’t fill in any forms for them or sort out loans, accommodation or disputes. We sat on our hands and rode out our parental anxiety.
One of our teens actually thanked us for this years later. You can gently ask if they need support but mostly step back and recognise that things will go wrong; they always do. Expect the unexpected.
If they want to come home for a reset, let them
This may feel counterintuitive, but many teens find university overwhelming and intense, and they may benefit from a few days back at home to recalibrate, according to Joules Sweeney, founder of What I Wish I Knew About University (WIWIKAU). It is not unusual to get a call after Freshers’ Week from teens struggling to adapt.
Around 45 per cent to 55 per cent of UK university students report finding the experience highly stressful or difficult, driven by a mix of academic pressure, isolation and financial anxiety. Tough love may not work for your child, so get them home and find out what they are feeling before any rash decisions are made.
Obviously, you know your teen best and all general advice is about testing what works for you and the teen you have, as they all mature at a different rate. But it’s normal to feel the fear as we let them go; the key is not making them responsible for soothing our fears. They need to focus on themselves, not on making us happy.
It’s okay to feel heartbroken
And some final things to know: you’ll need two boxes of tissues for the journey home, not one. According to Unite Students, 98 per cent of UK parents experience extreme grief or sadness when dropping off a child at university for the first time, while 19 per cent go through a clear period of depression.
It doesn’t get easier the second time round, I know from experience, and the melancholy emptiness of a childhood bedroom is best avoided for a day or two when you get home.
Please note, the advice above is not for those with SEN or more complex needs. Find more parenting teens and twenty-somethings advice on Lorraine Candy’s newsletter
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