The Fine Art of Letting Go

Closeness to their kids doesn't mean boomers are lenient. Sheila Walker, 51, a grocery clerk from Cleveland, doesn't think there's anything wrong with being in the face of her son, Ronald, 17. "He's a good boy, but I'm the mom," she says. "Part of our responsibility as parents is to know who your kids are with. Technology, like cell phones, makes it easier for us to monitor our kids." This fall, Ronald heads off to college. "Sure, I'm going to miss him," she says, "but I want him to be a man."

Many parents say letting go is hard because the stakes seem so much higher than when they were starting out. At every stage of their parenting careers, they've felt the pressure of competition—whether it's getting their kids into a good preschool, summer camp or college. Boomers might have spent their young-adult years shuffling from major to major or job to job, but many say they'd never condone that behavior in their kids. In fact, experimentation can be critical to real accomplishment, while following lockstep in a preordained path is often deadening. "The idea of taking good risks and doing your best and then learning from whatever happens is a necessary part of becoming a successful person," says Dave Verhaagen, a child and adolescent psychologist in North Carolina and author of "Parenting the Millennial Generation."

Barrie Smith, 45, of Old Westbury, N.Y., concedes that her son, Chase Steinlauf, about to turn 18, who just finished his freshman year at Duke University, has been at the center of her life. "Raising him was my career," she says proudly. She scheduled her days chauffeuring him to tennis, chess and math team. Things really ramped up when the college-admissions race started. She admits she pushed him to apply to the best schools. "You want that Harvard sticker on your car," she says. "They make a lot of connections at these schools."

Chase was a National Merit Scholar and graduated at the top of his class. Still, says Smith, "there was a lot of stress and fighting." She wanted Harvard. "I could see myself there," she says. Chase liked Yale. "He was trying to assert his independence," she says. He didn't succeed. Smith made him apply early to Harvard and he was deferred. He was rejected by Yale and got into Duke. "It was my mistake," Smith says. "I should have let him apply to the college of his choice."

She channeled her anxiety about his leaving into preparing his dorm room. Smith bought Ralph Lauren sheets, a cashmere throw, leather slippers, a sisal rug. "He lives like that at home," she explains. "I wanted to make it homey." Chase says he stuffed the decorative pillows, comforter and cashmere throw into his suitcase. "She likes things formal in a way that I find cluttered," he says diplomatically. Smith nearly passed out from anxiety about Chase's well-being after she dropped him off, but soon afterward, she started a Web site for equally worried moms of freshmen called mofchat.com. "It became a kind of catharsis," she says. When Chase talks about the Web site, he sounds more like the proud parent. "It was a lot more professional than I had anticipated," he says. "It's good to have a place where [parents] can talk to each other."

During college and the first years after graduation, young adults should be learning to make decisions for themselves and dealing with the consequences. Parents can help or hinder that process. "You have to go from manager to consultant, from onsite supervisor to mentor," says Helen Johnson, coauthor of "Don't Tell Me What to Do, Just Send Money." "You have to let them fail and face those tough situations. It's not easy to do. But if you don't, think about the message you are conveying to your son or daughter—that they're not able to handle their own life."