New start, sad end: College kids’ parents grapple with letting go

LOS ANGELES - It’s 2,111 miles from Elkhart, Ind., to Los Angeles, but Alexa Sieracki isn’t counting.

The new freshman at the University of Southern California would rather not know exactly how far she is from home, the better to enjoy the first days and weeks of a college dream that managed to transcend hard times in her northern Indiana city.

“I feel like I’m on the brink of so much change,” said Sieracki, 17. who started classes Aug. 24.

But Alexa’s mother, Kris Sieracki, like other parents of some 1.8 million first-time college students at four-year schools across the country, is aware of every inch of the distance. After leaving her youngest daughter in a USC dorm two weeks ago, she is trying to heed the advice of experts who say it’s possible, if painful, to smooth the transition from full house to empty nest.

“It’s just going to take me a while,” said Sieracki, 56, an herbalist and entrepreneur who largely arranged her work around the schedules of Alexa and her other daughter, Natasha, 21. “Motherhood has been like the most wonderful job in the world.”

Although it’s exciting and fulfilling, sending a child to college has rarely been easy, family psychology experts say. The move marks the end of the active stage of child-rearing and a shift to more passive kind of parenting, said Dr. Karen Soren, director of adolescent health services at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.

“Ideally you’re onto the next stage, which is the ‘you’ stage,” Soren said.

But for a generation of so-called “helicopter” parents — mothers and fathers who were urged to be extensively involved in their children’s academic and social lives — the shift can be particularly hard, said Marjorie Savage, director of a University of Minnesota parent program and author of a book on the college transition.

“Families today are not the same. They’re closer,” said Savage, author of the 2003 book, “You’re On Your Own (But I’m Here if You Need Me.) “It’s an experience for the family, not just an experience for the child.”

'The end of a phase'
That’s certainly the case for Alexa Sieracki, one of five Elkhart, Ind., students msnbc.com is following as part of long-term coverage of the effects of the economic crisis in one of the nation’s hardest-hit cities.

She was a star student and athlete at Elkhart Memorial High School whose college plans were jeopardized by blows to her family’s income, including medical bills for her mother’s bout with breast cancer and cuts at the U.S. Postal Service, where her 53-year-old father, Tim, is a letter carrier.

Carissa Ray / msnbc.com Kris Sieracki, mother of incoming freshman Alexa Sieracki, says her emotions "are all over the map."

But Alexa Sieracki’s dreams of studying geochemistry were fulfilled when she was chosen for an elite spot in USC’s Resident Honors Program and offered a generous scholarship to pay tuition and living expenses, which top $51,000 a year.

“Oh, gosh, how can you not be so thrilled for her?” said Kris Sieracki.

Still, the thrill is mixed with sadness when the family lands in Los Angeles and lugs seven suitcases into a waiting rental car.

“I’m all over the map,” said Kris Sieracki. “It’s the end of a phase for everyone.”

Modern-day parents typically struggle to wean themselves from intense, daily engagement with their college-age children, even as the children struggle to establish themselves as independent young adults, Savage said.

“We tell parents to think about the difference between letting them go and letting them grow,” she said.

That may be easier said than done, especially this year, when new college students are starting school in the midst of a historic recession, which has added financial worry to the emotional toll of the transition.

“I think it has had a more sobering effect,” said Savage, who has surveyed dozens of families. “Parents feel there’s a lot more at stake.”

More than 53 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges said they and their families had some concern about paying for school, and another 11 percent said they had major concerns, according to a December poll by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the Sierackis’ case, the family scrimped all summer to pay the $2,500 in travel fees to get Alexa to Los Angeles, plus necessary extras that tallied $300 at a local Target store and $800 at the USC bookstore. On top of that, there was a $150 bill for a chiropractor when Alexa woke up on moving day in severe pain with a pinched nerve in her neck.

“It’s a paycheck-to-paycheck game right now,” said Kris Sieracki, who estimates it’ll take until October to resolve the bills.

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