Seven ways to help your child thrive at university

'When it comes to smoothing your son or daughter’s transition to uni, all you can do is trust your instincts,' says Anna Moore. Photo / Getty Images

Each time I imagined saying goodbye to my eldest at university – and as the day drew nearer, I imagined it often – I welled up. Part of me couldn’t wait – it’s a rite of passage for parents too, helped along by a thousand films and TV dramas. I wanted to be there when we hit the road in an over-stuffed car with her bike on the back. I wanted to walk around her new college, follow as she collected the key and opened the door to her room. I wanted to meet the other students arriving and see who would be living around her.

I didn’t though. Instead, I waved goodbye outside our house as the car disappeared around the corner, my husband driving, my daughter in the back and my mum going along too for the experience (I trusted her to tell me every detail!). It hurt to miss it, but I couldn’t trust myself not to cry. For me, it was also a chapter closing – for my daughter, it was only an opening out. I didn’t want my own emotion to touch her day, or to leave her in a strange new city, waving goodbye to a crying mother.

When it comes to smoothing your son or daughter’s transition to uni, all you can do is trust your instincts. Every city, every university, every course, every son or daughter is different. Every year is too – by the time it was my second daughter’s turn to go in September 2020, I couldn’t drop her there anyway. Under Covid rules, only one (masked) parent was allowed to accompany each student and allocated a short window in which to unpack before leaving them in their new “bubble” of random housemates.

Whatever the circumstances, the critical part stays the same – how to quietly, sensibly manage your adult child’s expectations and prepare them for any challenges ahead. By the time they head off, they’ll have spent two years working towards this goal – maybe longer. They’ll have heard a lot of, “Oh my God, it’ll be amazing” and seen countless Instagram posts of student adventures and hard partying. (They won’t have seen Instagram posts showing long, lonely hours alone in a box room).

University can be enriching, exciting, magical, mind- and future-expanding – but it can also be lonely, stressful and overwhelming. You can’t underestimate the transition from living at home, safely ensconced in routines and rituals, watched and guided by parents and teachers to living independently with complete strangers, budgeting, shopping, cooking, washing, building a new community from scratch and adapting to self-directed learning. The recent data, which showed a 30 per cent drop-out rate amongst new students, certainly indicates that many start with inflated expectations.

For me, the way to prepare my three daughters has been through countless casual conversations about the stories of others. You don’t want to be the voice of doom or indicate in any way that you’re worried, or doubt their ability to cope. Instead, we talked about the experiences of nieces and nephews, of friends’ kids, of elder children we know.

Writer Anna Moore: You can’t solve their problems and (unless it’s extremely serious) you shouldn’t swoop in. Photo / Getty Images

Within those, much was positive, but there were also points of struggle, problems they ran into, issues they had to resolve – mostly minor, some serious. (I remember one daughter being flabbergasted when I told her that my friend’s daughter was unhappy at her university, didn’t like her flatmates and had switched accommodation. My daughter followed her social media that only showed her having a whale of a time).

Once they had settled in, it was time to step back. You can’t solve their problems and (unless it’s extremely serious) you shouldn’t swoop in. I never asked about their work, had no idea what their essays or assessments were or the feedback they were getting (unless they mentioned it, in which case, of course I was interested).

If they had a problem, big or small – one spilt tea over her laptop and lost all her folders, another hated her accommodation as it was so far from the the training ground for her football team, the one activity keeping her sane in lockdown – the conversations were around what they could do to solve it. (In that case, though the accommodation team were useless and didn’t allow a transfer, her vet school came up with a taxi fund to get her to and from football practice.)

We’ve never had a regular time to speak. My friend has a FaceTime call every Sunday with her daughter. It’s whatever feels right for you. The family WhatsApp is good for touchstones – pictures of the dog from us, maybe pictures of their latest culinary triumph from them. There are ways to show them they’re really loved – if it was snowing where they were, or they complained of the cold, I’d send woolly gloves and thermal vests. I’d send books sometimes, or recipes, or postcards, which often ended up on their walls. If one was at a loose end, they’d phone for a catch-up. I’d drop everything to really listen.

Balance is the hardest thing. Balancing their hopes and expectations with the less perfect reality. Balancing your instinct to steer and protect with their need to do it themselves. These days, it’s entirely possible to quietly stalk your kids from afar. You can see their new friends on their Instagram posts (and then delve into their friends’ Instagram posts too).

You can glean so much not only from their own social media, but the social media of their college or their football team, their department, their individual tutors. You can see what the weather is like where they are each morning on your weather app.

Balance is the hardest thing. Photo / Getty Images

When my first daughter left, she used Snapchat constantly, so I could even see her exact location in Oxford on Snapmap whenever I looked. (Now she’s in the library, now she’s in her room, now she’s clubbing...). I did look – at first. Then, as things settled and I knew she was happy, I stopped. If you feel you have an unhealthy focus on their new life, don’t be too hard on yourself. It might be a stage that is helping you let go.

Though I hadn’t dropped Ruby off when she started university, I did visit a month or so later. She met me in her new high street, and we walked and walked and talked and talked the entire day, stopping for lunch somewhere, seeing a concert in the evening, then I got a late-night bus to take me the 50 miles home.

I did that every season and those days are amongst the most cherished moments of my life. Getting to know a new city, seeing her bloom. It’s a chapter opening for you too.

Seven ways to help your child prepare for uni

“It’s not about you, it’s about them." Photo / Getty Images

1. No tearful goodbyes

“When it comes to saying goodbye, keep parental tears to a minimum,” advises Celia Dodd, author of All Grown Up: Nurturing Relationships with Adult Children and The Empty Nest. “It’s not about you, it’s about them. You might want to slip a card in their suitcase for them to find later, which tells them something from the heart. Kids can really treasure these cards.”

2. Get bank accounts in order

“This year, inflation means the average maintenance loan falls short of living costs by £439 a month,” warns Tom Allingham from advice service savethestudent.org. “Student bank accounts will offer incentives such as railcards, but focus on who is offering the best free overdraft facility. Also open an app-based bank account for daily spending. Transfer a set amount into it for disposable income and keep the rest for bills and rent.”

Focus on the practical, not how much you’re going to miss them. Photo / Getty Images

3. Be practical rather than emotional

“In the preparation, focus on the practical, not how much you’re going to miss them,” says Dodd. “A university counsellor told me that many students arrive not knowing how to look after themselves. Can they put a wash on, do they know when to wash their sheets and towels, how to get them dry without smelling, how to cook simple meals? Are they used to doing things on their own or will they panic when the door shuts?”

4. Manage expectations and prepare for reality

“You don’t want to be the ‘fun sponge’ but you do want them to have a realistic idea of challenges ahead,” says Janey Downshire, co-author of Teenagers Translated: A Parent’s Survival Guide. “Don’t sit down for a ‘big talk’, have lots of conversations instead. A good question to ask is, ‘If you’ve just graduated and felt that it had been successful, what does success look like to you?’ Vocalising goals helps to get them thinking about what’s realistic and achievable.”

Your child is now in the driving seat but it’s still worth gently encouraging them to build habits that you know are important to their health and wellbeing. Photo / Getty Images

5. Help healthy habits

“Your child is now in the driving seat but it’s still worth gently encouraging them to build habits that you know are important to their health and wellbeing,” says Downshire. (“You know you love running, how are you going to fit that in?”, “Remember how low you get when you don’t sleep enough.”) Downshire adds, “They are also going to be exposed to drugs and alcohol, so it can be good to ask, ‘What would you do if you’re out with friends and one has overdone it?’ It encourages them to think about what they’ll be exposed to, but casts them as the sensible one.”

6. Steer them towards finding their tribe

Some universities are repackaging Freshers Week to Welcome Week to shake off the alcohol-fuelled connotations. For some, it’s a welcome reminder that there will be something for everyone. “If someone isn’t a drinker, it really doesn’t matter,” says Allingham. “They’re going into a community of tens of thousands. It’s impossible that there won’t be people with similar interests.”

Finding compatible housemates is a common stumbling block. “Try to warn against early judgements,” says Downshire. Even if they’re all very different, try finding common ground to smooth the atmosphere. (Group dinner? Film night?) “If you don’t hit it off, can they live with it, eliminate the white noise, the way someone irritates them, and focus on people and activities they do like? It’s a skill they’ll call on for the rest of their life.”

7. Don’t forget the academics

“Uni is very different from school,” says Allingham. “Don’t expect tutors to reach out to you. The onus is on you to reach out.” Students should arrive knowing this and be ready to build a closer relationship with a tutor by booking an appointment to talk, emailing with any questions or staying behind after a class. There are already strike days planned for September.

“There’s no way to circumvent that; you might not get the contact you expected and it’s good to be aware of that,” says Allingham. Talk to your personal tutor with any concerns about the impact of this on your studies – and for advice on how to complain, visit savethestudent.org.