College is the ultimate paradox: your kid is technically an adult, but still makes decisions that remind you of a seventh grader (or maybe 7 y/o??) with car keys and Apple Pay. As parents, our instinct is to step in, fix, optimize, helicopter, protect!

The problem? That instinct often backfires. The line between helping and handicapping is thinner than ever.

Here are five principles — call them uncomfortable truths — that will make you a better parent to your college student.

1. Listen with the intent of understanding

Most parents listen the way people check their phones — waiting for their turn to talk. While the other person is talking, our brains are counting down the seconds to respond. We’re not really listening. Your kid doesn’t need a TED Talk every time they share a problem. They need you to shut up and hear them. Listening with intent means you aren’t rehearsing a counterpoint in your head, you aren’t solving before they finish, and you aren’t telling them about the time you figured it out in 1989. Listen with intent of understanding their values, beliefs, and meaning.

The ROI of listening? Trust. If they feel heard, they’ll come back. If they feel judged, they’ll find another audience — their roommate, their TikTok feed, or worse, no one.

Action: Reframe back to them what they said but in your words. Not a question. Not advice. Not agreement. Just reframing. This gives them the opportunity to give the thumbs up or down whether you got the message.

2. Nothing is ever as bad or as great as we (or our kids) believe

College is a land of extremes. A failed midterm feels like the end of the world. An internship offer feels like they’ve won life’s lottery. Neither is true. Success and failure are rarely permanent; they’re signals. Your job is to help your kid build ballast. Don’t pour gasoline on their panic, and don’t buy champagne for every small win. The middle lane is where resilience and anti-fragility lives and grows.

Action: Don’t jump to solve their problems or amplify their wins. Avoid saying they are good or bad at something. Focus on their inputs and process.

3. Don’t rob them of experience

Pain is a feature, not a bug. Struggling with a tough class, blowing a deadline, even a breakup — these are not malfunctions you need to fix. They’re the raw material of growth. Every time you step in to “help,” you’re stealing currency from their bank of competence.

Think of it this way: if you protect them from all mistakes, you also rob them of the confidence that comes from recovering. Independence doesn’t arrive in a box on graduation day. It’s built one awkward, messy, sometimes humiliating, experience at a time.

Action: Talk about anti-fragility (growth through adversity) with them and keep your own psychological baggage addressed with a therapist.

4. Help them focus on process, not outcomes

College is a scoreboard culture. Greek life, GPA, internships, likes, followers, offers. Its dopamine hits disguised as data. The problem is outcomes are mostly lagging indicators of process – a reality distortion field through the lens of vanity metrics.

Instead of asking, “What grade did you get?” try, “How much time did you spend preparing?” Instead of obsessing about whether they landed the internship, ask, “How many people did you reach out to this week?” Winning is just the receipt of consistent effort. Teach them to fall in love with reps, not ribbons.

Action: Like I said above, focus your language on process, not outcomes. Share stories from your personal/professional life highlighting how process-orientation actually leads to more desirable outcomes.

5. Choose the right sandbox

I’m a firm believer we should NOT let kids choose whatever school they want. This is a nearly $100k decision we’re leaving up to an 18 y/o?? But why beyond the financial responsibility am I so focused on parents providing more limited options? Because what our kids don’t realize (and also many adults) is that we are the average of the five people we’re around most. You can’ choose their friends, but you can nudge them towards to right sandbox. Your kid’s peer group (and Tik Tok/social media) is more influential than you are. Full stop. The roommates, study partners, teammates, friends — they are the gravity well pulling your kid toward or away from the person they’ll become.

This doesn’t mean you pick their friends for them. It means you push them toward ecosystems where ambition, kindness, and curiosity are the norm. Encourage clubs, sports, labs, and jobs where they’ll marinate in better averages. Because peers don’t just influence — they compound.

Action: The ‘five people we’re around most’ can also include YouTube influencers, authors, nonfiction characters, life coaches, etc. Anyone that has a strong message that your kid embraces. Give them access to people that live the values your kid wants to be, not the kid they are right now.

The Bottom Line

Your kid doesn’t need a manager. They need a parent who can play the long game. Listen more. Panic less (in front of them, at least). Let them skin their knees. Focus on process. Surround them with good people.

College isn’t a launchpad to perfection — it’s the messy middle of becoming. You, me and every other adult that’s working and raising a family has screwed up, made terrible mistakes, and….learned from all of it. We are better versions of ourselves because of the bad stuff we didn’t get insulated from. And the best gift you can give your kid isn’t protection from that mess. It’s the confidence to wade through it and come out stronger.