Boston is abuzz as college kids come back to school.
College years can be among the most formative of a person’s life, but they can also be some of the most stressful. Many parents worry over their child’s wellbeing during that time.
But Dr. Mathilde Ross, a psychiatrist at Boston University for over 18 years and author of the book “How to Thrive at College: A Guide to the Ups and Downs of Mental Health on Campus,” argues that parents’ anxiety about their children’s anxiety is causing a freak out on mental health.
She sat down with WBUR’s All Things Considered to talk about what parents should keep in mind as their kids start or head back to college.
Highlights from this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.
Interview Highlights
On how the pandemic changed the way we think about mental health…
“For most of my career in college mental health, I would get a couple calls a year from the parent of a teenager who was concerned about their kid, and it would generally be about something kind of serious. Coming out of the pandemic and the couple years that followed, I was getting those calls a couple times a week. A couple of the things that I noticed, one was that most of the calls were about kids who seemed fine to me.
“Another thing I noticed was that most of the people getting a lot of attention in the media, in books and articles, were not mental health professionals. … There was a lot of hyperbole and just general freaking out, and it was really panicking parents.
“And this is a problem if you’re me, because what teenagers need more than anything is for their parents to be steady and kind of boring. And what teenagers don’t need is parents who are wigging out about everything. And when parents get super anxious, it can cause a lot of problems with getting along with their teenager well.”
On overparenting and academic pressure…
“The longer I spent writing and the more the themes were emerging in the stories I was telling, the more story after story connected the dots back to college pressure in some way.
“There isn’t an area of childhood that’s left where kids can just be kids. So it’s not just academics where there’s this perception that you have to start getting straight A’s starting in ninth grade … It’s the sports, it’s theater, it’s robotics, it’s the violin. There is not an area of childhood that hasn’t been turned into a track to college if you only work hard enough at it.
“This is a tricky thing to talk about because parents want their kids to achieve. And yet the role of a parent isn’t really achievement. The role of a parent is development. Those two things are largely overlapping.”
On advice for parents as their children head to college…
“When your kids go to college, to the degree that it’s possible, follow their lead. There’s going to be an amount that they naturally call home or text you or whatever, try to follow that lead as opposed to following when you feel like calling them, at least in the beginning to let them settle in.
“So ‘parent,’ the word used to be a noun, and over sometime in the last 30 years, it became a verb. No one is just a parent anymore. Everyone is in there parenting. Little kids do need parents who are verbs, parents who are in there, reading with them, getting dirty, helping them make decisions about what to wear.
“Teenagers mostly need their parents to be nouns. They just want them to kind of be there, not in the way, not doing anything embarrassing, not sort of ruining the vibe or cramping their style. Don’t be fooled by their demeanor. You are on their mind all of the time, and whenever something good or something bad happens to them, the first thing they’re going to be imagining is your reaction. But they don’t want your embodied self to be reflecting that. They just kind of want you to be there. So when your kid goes to college, be a noun.”
On advice for college students…
“My advice is go to class and go to class prepared. Inevitably, students who are a little bit uncertain about themselves are the ones who are a little bit more reluctant to go, a little bit more reluctant to kind of stick their leg out and be a part of it, and they start to believe pretty quickly that the other kids are just smarter than them, when actually just the other kids did the reading.
“Another thing I would say, if it’s good enough for your dog, it’s good enough for you. So your dog needs sleep, your dog needs play, your dog needs food and water. Those are things you need. Your dog does not need high doses of caffeine or other substances. Those are things you do not need.”
Editor’s Note: Boston University owns WBUR’s broadcast license. WBUR is editorially independent.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
