When Your Kid Goes to College:: A Parents' Survival Guide

by Carol Barkin

Book Overview

During the summer before he went to college, he was obnoxious; he said, 'There's a reason I'm acting this way; it will make it easier for you to have me leave.'

When she was packing to leave, she was completely preoccupied with how many sheets and towels to take. I was thinking, 'My kid is leaving home forever, and life is taken up with minutiae.'

It's an emotional rollercoaster, a combination of missing him and feeling happy and excited for...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380798409
• ISBN13: 9780380798407
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Great book for parents!

This book is a must-read for parents of college students, especially empty nesters for the first time. As author of The ABC's of College Life, a street-smart guide dishing out the inside scoop on college life, I highly recommend When Your Kid Goes to College as the ultimate survival guide for parents!

A marvelous book for parents

Our freshmen advisors and other staff who interact with parents think that When Your Kid Goes to College is a "must read" and a great resource book for parents. Although my copy is still circulating around campus, I intend to get it back and keep it handy for my own personal use when my son goes off to college in a few short years.

A very comforting guide for the whole family.

This book is a comfort--a great guide that can handhold the whole family through the jittery pre-college summer and the first college year. We put so much energy and time into getting our kids into college that we forget that there is another whole phase of life, filled with all kinds of anxieties, that takes over the minute they are accepted. This book is great at identifying all of that in a readable and sometimes gently humorous way--and just helping you through. It really is a survival guide, and I recommend it for anyone whose kid has just been accepted to college or who is in his or her first year.

Practical, reassuring guide for a time of uneasy transition

After more than a dozen years as a dean of first-year students, I sent my own first child off to college five years ago, after an anxious and tearful summer. My own vast professional experience proved to be an embarrassment, as I forgot all the speeches I had made to parents encouraging them to "let go." This book is a guide that puts it all in perspective, from the practical preparations through the uneasy transitions of the first year. Having read it, I will be much better prepared when my second daughter goes off to college this year. In fact, I plan to keep it on my night stand.

good book for soon to be empty nesters!!

Very well written...lots of quotes from kids and parents...and chapter written by her son from a kids point of view. Lots of relevant information for parents who have their first...or only kid heading off to college. Definitely worth the money.