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I Left My Son in San FranciscoLearning to quash my alpha-mother tendencies and let my kid grow up.

By Bonnie GoldsteinPosted Thursday, April 24, 2008, at 4:13 PM ET

My baby recently left home. He's 19 and launching his life in an age-appropriate way: subsidized by his parents, at school in a distant city, directing himself toward self-sufficiency and maturity. Nevertheless, the day his move became effective, I felt like I'd left him alone in the woods with no pebbles. This tender son was born 16 years after his big sister. She was learning quadratic equations as he was learning how to hold a spoon. When either child faltered, I'd try to help: "Here, let me."

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My daughter, now an adult, lives in New York, far from our kitchen table in Washington, D.C., a circumstance to which we both eventually adjusted. But when Nate moved to San Francisco in January, taking all the worldly possessions he could fit in a suitcase (including his apparently indispensable Xbox), I was a wreck. This despite the fact I went with him to help him acclimate. With his laptop's browser bookmarked to Bay Area Craigslist, he acquired a MUNI bus schedule, a BART diagram, and a large folding map of the seven-mile peninsula. We studied neighborhoods while bunking temporarily in the garage of family friends in the Richmond district.

On my last day there, I watched him fill out his first rental application for a small low-ceilinged room on San Benito, walking distance from college. The Chinese man who was "helping the landlady" had given us a form so foreign to Nate it could have been written in characters. I resisted saying, "Here, let me."

I have been working on curbing my rather overbearing alpha-mother tendencies. During Nate's final year of high school, I impersonated him online, filling out and submitting 11 versions of the Common Application for undergraduate admission. The guidance counselor at his private school told parents such "clerical" support was expected. It became my full-time job. Nate was apathetic about college applications, even with (or maybe because of) such competent staffing. High school barely engaged him. His assignments were often late or incomplete.

"Forget California," the college adviser told him, dismissing Nate's only tentative regional preference. "The U.C. system considers only your grades." The good news: His SAT scores were good, "especially that 760 in math." He should "concentrate" on engineering programs, she counseled. Although Nate loved Legos and had a knack for calculus, I was not convinced those talents should determine a career choice. He was also intrigued by human behavior and was a whiz at those logic puzzles you find on the LSAT. Nate's best friend, more certain of his passions, was planning to be an architect, however, so the adviser's suggestion of a mechanical major took hold. OK, I'll be an engineer, Nate seemed to say, glad that's settled, before losing interest altogether.

Nate's contribution to the college admissions process consisted of showing up for standardized tests and writing a personal composition at gunpoint: a list of sentences beginning with the word I. "I get lost in my own imagination; I love to engage in a heated, smart argument; I can't stand spiders; I can take a hit." As his clerical assistant, I helped reorder the declaratory statements and broke them into five-line groupings to resemble blank verse. The result was acceptance at the engineering departments of several universities, including the University of Wisconsin, which he chose.

His Madison dormitory room had loft beds, built-in desks, and a TV donated by his rural Wisconsin roommate, basic cable included. I came along for freshman move-in weekend. We drove between Home Depot and Target, systematically collecting housewares and snack food for the small dorm fridge. Only when I left that Monday did he whisper, "Don't go."

I did, though, and I didn't go back, either; too cold.

Nate's adjustment to post-secondary education was mixed. He liked his meal card. He did not enjoy advanced calculus across a cold, windy campus. He hunkered in, slept as much as he wanted, and found the cooking channel especially compelling. At Thanksgiving he reported midterms had gone fine. Returning to school after Christmas, he learned that his sedentary first semester had earned him academic probation and a 1.0 GPA. Despite vowing to shape up, Nate continued to miss multiple physics labs that spring. In May he was officially dropped. Restricted from registering for September, he could take "a semester to reflect" and return the following January.

He felt awful. Failure is painful. Also, he was sure we were going to disown him. His freshman experiment took a big chunk out of the college fund. But the fact is, he wasn't ready. He had not particularly wanted to grow up, he now admits. For a time, he even hoped he was developmentally disabled, so he wouldn't have to.

His dad and I were "disappointed" and "concerned," of course, but completely on his side when the bottom fell out. Feeling guilty for not visiting him, I soothed, "We'll figure out what went wrong and relaunch."

He came home to an unscheduled intervention. While he'd been watching the food channel, his sister had had a spectacular season. We were hosting a garden party in her honor the same weekend he arrived with his duffel bag. "Get ready for every grown-up you've ever known," I warned him, "to ask how you did at school."

"Poorly," I overheard my straight-talking son admit to a guest, "but that was my fault. I didn't complete my assignments." As disturbing as the circumstances were, I was glad to have him back. I hadn't finished raising him yet.