What is the best way for college students to convince their parents to let them be independent?

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College Life and Student Independence
To many parents, allowing their college-aged children go living on a university campus can be a challenging experience. However, it is a matter of managing the boundaries between generations and accepting that despite the popular culture claims, college is not a 24-hour party. On the other hand, to most students, this separation anxiety is more often than not, caused by their parents not allowing them to live their lives to their fullest thanks to their prejudices and problems. According to an article in The Guardian, “an overprotected child is a deprived one, and if they find themselves in an arrested stage of development, they should make a claim for psychological abuse. (Hodson 1), which means that by disallowing young students from fully experiencing college might prove detrimental to their development.
However, what are the problems parents are seeing? At a first glance could be an issue of overprotection and control. Therefore, the seriousness of the problem stems from its possibility to hinder their children’s development. If this problem is not solved, these students who could not live their college life fully might be at a severe disadvantage to those who could on the basis that college life gives life experiences that are hard to find in a home environment. Regarding solutions, this is not an institutionalized problem, which difficulty finding a solution that fits all cases. Although the solutions are mostly particular, a general solution could be related to improving parent-children communications to bolster parental trust as well as enforcing the family bonds.

To do so, trust must be built up between parents and their offsprings. Generally speaking, this trust comes with thorough communication. By understanding their parents’ fears, students might be able to address them with facts and compromises instead of scoffing at them and considering their parents outdated or an annoyance. On the other hand, parents should trust their children enough to feel confident that the lessons they taught during their upbringing are going to stick, making them self-sufficient individuals that would not cave in to peer pressure. Hence, by improving these communication lines, parental relationships are bound to improve, changing the country’s paradigms and hopefully reducing situations related to a faulty upbringing.
The counter-arguments that could exist come from situations which the parents’ cultural background makes it tough for them taking the decision of letting their sons and daughters stay in a college dorm. Strictly speaking, although decisions related to cultural backgrounds are not misguided, it can be misinformed, on the grounds of a faulty understanding of how college life really is and how it improves the student’s life not only in an academic sense but in their ability to rely on themselves and sort their difficulties without resorting to power figures. Hence, by understanding that these decisions have to be taken as a way of giving their children the same opportunities, parents are sure to cede.
Going to college can be a stressful experience for all the people involved, but if both parties communicate accordingly, it should not be. Instead, it can be regarded as a time of self-discovery and the final proof that individual upbringing was adequate or not. Therefore, by allowing their sons and daughters to the dorm in college, parents are going to instill a sense of self-sufficiency to their children, something they might not find in their homes. Besides, in the world as competitive as the one we live in, having people skills and relating to others can be key to securing a good life.
Works Cited
Hodson, P. “My Message to the Parents Who Can’t Let Their Children Go: Grow up.” The Guardian 5 Aug. 2012: 1. The Guardian. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.