When Parents Cannot Let Go: Insights Highlighted by the College Admissions Scandal

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by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD

Your children are not your children...

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts...

                 Kahlil Gibran, "On Children"

     The college admissions scandal that became public in March 2019 is living proof that a marriage of entitlement and ethical violation can morph into catastrophe. Yet, the scandal does far more. Though few examples of parental intrusiveness are as extreme, it draws much needed attention to a pervasive, ongoing, largely unrecognized epidemic threatening all socioeconomic groups, and all cultural backgrounds—the inability of far too many parents to understand the importance of letting go of their children and supporting them as they carve out their chosen paths in life. This inability to recognize and respect the necessity of an age-appropriate separation process imperils the confidence and coping capacities of their children as they become teenagers and young adults.

     In my private and pro bono Philadelphia practice, I work with college-age students from various colleges and myriad backgrounds. Again and again, my young clients ask, “Why don’t my parents give me space? Why don’t they allow me to have my own ideas, to be me?” And again and again, I see how behavioral patterns and expectations of well-intended parents deprive their children of opportunities to develop self-awareness and self-confidence, and that these ill-formed patterns perpetuate—and can intensify.

     In addition to academic accomplishments, a college experience provides the opportunity to expand friendships outside of one’s family and familiar surroundings; to develop leadership skills that will later benefit one’s community; and to face unexpected losses, unfairness, and injustice with resilience—the ability to pick up the pieces when dealt stunning blows, learn from what went wrong, and move on. This navigational system, best described as “an emotional sense of direction,” is essential in choices involving love, friendship, and work, and cannot be achieved without parental permission to separate and begin the process of defining one’s own life. 

     Case in point: During a family therapy session, a high school junior did his best to explain to his parents that their united, determined desire to micromanage his friendships, his college choice, and all aspects of his life was suffocating. Unable to deal with their son’s honesty and expressed frustration, and see the source of his anxiety, the father screamed, “What you require, young man, is medication and a different therapist.” Despite their son’s and my request to continue to speak together, both parents ordered him out of my office. (He remained in a pro bono therapy group for teenage students.)  

     Not long after this experience, I began a literature search with the goal to identify specific parental behavioral patterns that were detrimental to the best growth possible for their children. I also began to examine cases extending over 25 years in order to identify underlying fears that led to these patterns. 

     In two years, I accomplished this goal, isolating and codifying six patterns: 

1. rage (bullying or threatening a child’s well-being is combined with demeaning)
2. rejection/abandonment (withdrawal of love by parents or caretakers when a child expresses an opinion that differs or displeases)
3. complete neglect (severe lack of emotional closeness)
4. enmeshment (family members are glued together, and are expected to remain so, with parents in control)
5. extreme overprotection (children are continuously coddled in destructive ways)
6. extreme overindulgence (children grow up with every whim indulged and with a sense of entitlement, believing they deserve more than “ordinary people”)

     In extreme overprotection and overindulgence, the parental goal is often to be and remain a child’s best friend. In enmeshed families, the parental goal usually has more to do with unquestioned authority.

     Each of these patterns (and sometimes there is overlap) impedes the separation necessary to grow into adults who know they matter, but who do not view themselves as the center of the universe—they know that others matter just as much. 

     While I was the director of the family life education department in a large family service agency, I learned that psychoeducation can often be a more productive way (with far less defensiveness) for parents to grow to understand their children’s motivations, and the harm that has unknowingly been inflicted. Soon after completing my research, I designed a psychoeducational course for parents that consists of three parts (which perhaps you can adapt as your own).     

I.  I introduce for discussion the six patterns of destructive parental interaction.

     Group members have no difficulty understanding that rage within a home, the rejection or abandonment of a child, and complete neglect impair confidence. Also, it is easily accepted that these behavioral patterns are usually caused by events during formative years of parents and caretakers.

     Difficulty begins with the discussion of enmeshment, extreme overprotection, and extreme overindulgence. In enmeshed families, all in the family are expected to conduct themselves without individuality of expression or ideas – as if, instead, all members are glued together. Children are not given permission or opportunity to reach their individual, unique potential. As years pass, no one can become as important, much less more important, to children in enmeshed families than their parents. Group member frustration is intensified when the emotional cost of overprotection and overindulgence to their children enters the discussion. Overprotective parents are the ones who arrive on campus (sometimes asked to come, sometimes not) if their teenagers experience any difficulty—from a grade seen as unfair or undeserved to a romantic breakup. Overindulgent ones also swoop in, often with reservations made in expensive restaurants and exclusive hotels.

     Parents invested in these three ongoing patterns text their teenagers far too regularly and expect the same from them. They carefully scrutinize course selections and rule out courses they find irrelevant and unnecessary. With regularity, they edit or write papers (or hire others to do so), and students turn to these parents for academic planning, rather than their advisors and professors. Children whose parents overindulge and overprotect easily adopt their parents’ view of life:  we are entitled to far more than ‘ordinary people.’ The important parental message, “I am sure you can deal with inevitable problems without my input!” does not occur to them.  

     When I frame these parenting patterns as ones that deprive teenagers and young adults of the opportunity to develop important friendships, confidence in academic and leadership skills, as well as the capacity for resilience, parental anxiety is palpable—not due to what a child loses, but because this knowledge is experienced as a threat to an engrained parental system. When I explain that without permission to separate from their parents, young people will not develop what can be described as “an emotional sense of direction,” which allows them to navigate the slippery slopes of life, I am sure that there have been times when if rotten tomatoes were in our room, I would be the recipient.

     Anxieties are eased when it is stressed that if danger is involved, parental intervention is of course appropriate, and that giving our children permission to separate is the best possible approach to guaranteeing a trusting and fulfilling relationship with them as years pass.    

II.  We examine the impact of destructive patterns.

     Instances are discussed in which teenagers turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with the inability to feel whole away from parents, act out against parental domination through selecting reckless or sadistic sexual partners, drop out of school and withdraw because of their inability to cope with disappointment, develop certain physical illnesses, or run away. 

III.  We examine the reasons these patterns develop.

     When we shift to the identification of the following reasons (which can overlap) for destructive patterns of behavior, discussions become moving, reflective, and inspiring.

• A desire that children succeed in reaching the dreams denied their parents. If we impose what in our own lives has not been realized, we obliterate their right to their own dreams. 
• The desire to protect our children from facing cruelties and injustices in the real world. What message are we sending our kids if they believe parents have no faith that they will deal with reality, regardless of how stony its path?
• The fear of difference—of a child losing identification with his/her/their culture.  Yet, success in today’s world necessitates developing trust with those of differing backgrounds.
• The fear to face our own mortality. The question then becomes: Does this fear keep us from carrying out our most important parental responsibility -- to prepare our children to live and love well, effectively, and honorably when our lives are completed?   
• There is one further motivation discussed, which has absolutely nothing to do with the “protection” or “success” of children. It is instead an all-consuming parental determination to hide from deep insecurities and be seen as magnificently successful human beings in all facets of life. In these environments, children become unknowing pawns in a parental public relations campaign. 

     This examination results in discussion about the frustrations parents faced growing up and how this has had an impact on their parenting. In one group, members were brought to tears as a father shared his fear of displeasing his dad, who imposed a family business on him that he always hated. He saw that he was trying to have a second chance for his desires to be realized by imposing his will on his son (as he had been treated), and how unfair this was to him. 

     In another group, enormous support was given a mom who realized that the estrangement from her parents and sister, because she married outside of her religion and was disowned, had caused her to hold her daughter in what she now saw as “a death grip.” 

     These reflections and insights go on and on. With regularity, several group members continue to meet and support each other in a healthy separation process after the course is completed.  

For Further Reading

Smullens, S. (2003, Fall). Developing an emotional sense of direction: A therapeutic model for the treatment of emotional abuse, Annals of the American Psychotherapy Association, 6 (3), 17-21.

Smullens, S. (2010). The codification and treatment of emotional abuse in structured group therapy, International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 60, 111-130.

SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD, whose private and pro bono clinical social work practice is in Philadelphia, is a certified group psychotherapist and family life educator. She is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pennsylvania chapter of NASW, and the 2013 NASW Media Award for Best Article. SaraKay is the author of Whoever Said Life Is Fair, Setting YourSelf Free, and Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work. Her writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, and blogs. SaraKay's professional life continues to be devoted to highlighting destructive societal forces through communication, advocacy, and activism. Read more about her work at SaraKaySmullens.com.