You're not at college anymore

"We're not trying to get in her space," says Dottie Hubbard, Jill's mom, who admits that she does worry more about her daughter when she is home. When Jill's at school, Ms. Hubbard can imagine that she's always in the library, she jokes.

One suggestion - offered by Charles Calahan, a dad and assistant clinical professor of family studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. - is that parents try not to think of their students as children when issues arise. Instead, he advises, parents should make the effort to think: "If they were another adult, how would I negotiate this?"

Moms and dads may also be going through "growing pains" of sorts, notes Professor Calahan, figuring out how to be the parents of an adult child, or perhaps learning how to be a couple again if all their children are now out of the house. "It's healthy for parents to learn to let go," he says.

Some parents are already reconciled to the idea that their child is becoming more adultlike.

"They're making decisions every day and every evening by themselves about what's safe, what's not," says Amy Fine, the mother of a Harvard University sophomore. "So to suddenly question their judgment on the two weeks that they're home for vacation - it's a little late for that, it seems."

She and her husband do ask when their son plans to be home, but they expect of him only what they expect of each other in terms of reporting in: call me when you'll be significantly late, because that's what adults who care about one another do.

Their son, Jeremy Hartman, says his parents didn't encroach on his independence during his visits home as a freshman, but they did seem to want to re-establish their parent-child relationship by doing nice things for him: "Cooking for me, going out and picking things up for me. Just general, like, cuddliness," he says.

Instead of trying to return to the previous relationship, college advisers encourage parents to support their almost-adult children in ways that foster their independence during visits home. Have them talk about what they are learning and what their goals are, and encourage them to continue to handle their own finances, suggests Coburn.

If parents are concerned about their student's decisionmaking, ask them questions, suggests Emory's Professor Duke: "If I weren't here, how would you handle [a problem]? If you were away at school, what would you do?"

For all the talk about tension, many students and parents do look forward to winter break.

Emory sophomore Jane Farrington, for instance, couldn't wait to get home to help decorate the tree her freshman year. She had been abroad the previous Christmas, traveling before she started school.

Her parents are pretty trusting of her - she doesn't have a curfew, but she's often expected to include her younger sister in her social activities, Ms. Farrington says.

The atmosphere at home becomes much more lively when Jane is back, her mom has noticed.

"It's like [having] this big, really fun tornado in many ways. I love having her here," says Nancy Tavelli, director of residence life at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.

Still, Ms. Tavelli adds: "We also have this pressure, because you want her to have a good time, and you want to do things that she likes doing, and you want it to be a good visit. So you don't kind of have your normal life quite as much."

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