Real Talk

A Letter To Parents Who Have College Freshmen For Kids: “It’s Okay, Letting Go Is Hard”

by Kevyn Gohu
June 26, 2025

The school year is starting, and as we see our kids entering college as freshmen, this is where the “letting go” gets extra hard

College is here, and our kids are now freshmen.

While some of us welcome the new chapter happily, some of us see it as a bittersweet start. It’s our child, now facing people from other walks of life. But this time, we can’t go with them. Worse, we know it’s socially counterproductive to watch them like a hawk. That parental instinct to run over and protect them can be very, very difficult to fight against.

And that’s okay.

The school year is starting, and as we see our kids entering college as freshmen, this is where the "letting go" gets extra hard

College & Freshmen: The Time To “Horse Around”

Freshman year. It’s the year they get to learn about the school, the restaurants around, and the people from different walks of life. Also, it’s the year where they realize that their 100% may only just 50% to others.

We always believed that high school was the time to fool around. However, it doesn’t work that way for those who are in a private school. Things are more controlled there, and so, college is like a source of “freedom.” The light at the end of the tunnel — it’s the tunnel that leads them to the “I-can-do-whatever-I-want” land.

But we know for a fact that college isn’t like that. It’s when we discover that teachers have different standards. Some take their mentoring as a sacred mission; others see it as just a job to get by. Either way, our college freshmen kids will discover that college isn’t just the land of freedom. It’s one filled with accountability; one that has dire consequences should the rules be broken.

It’s not that we can’t do something about it

Try as we might, we can’t protect our kids from all the horsing around they’ll do in college. We can install Life360 on their phones, demand that they don’t have extracurriculars, and insist that they stay away from what we call a “bad crowd.” But it’s inevitable; they will get hit. These “evils” don’t always present themselves in a bad way. Sometimes, they present themselves in neat little packages with a bow, like in the form of friendships, laughs, and inside jokes that they want to be a part of.

And what happens to us? Some of us, unfortunately, have to accept that we’ll be considered people who are on a “need-to-know” basis. Especially if we have been unhealthily strict with them, they will “curate” with us. They won’t tell us certain things because they already have an idea of how we’ll respond.

So, it’s not that we can’t do something about it. It’s that we won’t simply because we’re not aware.

We don’t willfully ignore it. We just don’t know.

The realization hurts and it’s okay to take awhile

As they enter college, it’ll be painful to realize that the relationship will change. Our kids, now college freshmen, will find themselves in a whole new world filled with cultures that even we don’t know. Sure, AI can have answers, but even we don’t know if tech has all the answers. Even a part of us can’t trust the school to completely look after them, especially since they’re “legal.”

So, as they go to college and leave our “shelter,” it’s okay to mourn. It’s okay to try and get them to stay. But it’s inevitable and we’ll realize that the only thing we can do is to trust them.