Parents are hiring 'concierge moms' to help their kids at college, but is it a bad idea?

Imagine you live in Los Angeles but you send your child off to college in New York. Two weeks into their first semester, they get sick.

Lucky for you, you've got a concierge mom on speed-dial.

Wait. A what?

Yes.

Mindy Horwitz created such a service in 2019 called "mindyKNOWS." Basically Parents pay for someone local to be there for their college student when they can't. Birthdays, health scares, you name it. Families can hire one of these moms for students at Penn State, Northwestern, Washington University in St. Louis and more.

"We consider ourselves to be experts in our city, and can help other parents with personal recommendations, advice and tips in our cities," Horwitz, 53, says. "We think of ourselves as their family away from home, and we give parents peace of mind knowing that we're here to help when they need some extra support."

But is that really such a good idea? Experts have decried helicopter parents, and without the opportunity to fend themselves, some worry students may never develop critical life skills.

"This kind of loving gesture can actually end up being a setback and interfering with a young adult's development," says Emily Edlynn, a clinical psychologist.

'We're not getting in the way'

These concierge services are wide-ranging – with most requests coming from parents. It costs $49 for a month of service; $250 for a semester; $450 for a year; and $1,600 for all four years of school. A "mom" might do everything from recommending a local doctor to finding a wheelchair to rent for visiting grandparents coming to town. More than 100 families have signed up for the service.

What they won't do? Wash clothes, iron sheets or cook dinner. "Students are doing all the things that students need to be doing," Horwitz says. "We're not getting in the way of that at all."

That said, Edlynn suggests parents plan ahead before these students go off to college, like try having them make their own doctor's appointments.

That helps them build confidence in these basic skills that parents may forget about. And it doesn't need to stop there. "A huge step before this transition is to identify ahead of time all the supportive resources at a college campus, and making sure your child knows how to access the campus counseling center or other types of supportive resources on campus so that they feel like they know what to do if they start to struggle," Edlynn says.

'That primitive need'

Still, the moms who are a part of Horwitz's business are more focused on miscellaneous logistics. Maybe they drop off a surprise for Valentine's Day. A birthday. Help celebrate someone getting an internship. Deliver chicken soup if a student is feeling under the weather.

But it's a slippery slope: "You have that primitive need for maternal care or just that parental love and nurturing," Edlynn says. "And then you have the parents who are having their own adjustment of not being right there to nurture their child, especially when they're ill."

Sometimes – when needed – the moms go above and beyond. In 2020, a student needed to go to the emergency room early in the semester. Her parents couldn't easily get to town given the pandemic, so Horwitz picked up her toothbrush and pajamas from her dorm and brought them to the hospital. She'd reach out to the student each day to see if she could bring her something for lunch, too.

"Those are the kinds of things that I do on a daily basis," Horwitz says. "I mean, luckily somebody's not in the hospital every day, but we're able to troubleshoot and solve problems and ease the stress of parents from afar."

While sweet, "part of becoming an adult is relying on other people besides your parents in those times," adds Edlynn. "And it's really critical for adult wellbeing to have your own community and not just your parents."

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'An extended family'

Horwitz says that not everyone needs something every day, of course. She could go months without hearing from a parent.

"We're here to be like an extended family," she says. "Our goal is to build a relationship with these families so that they have support when they need it, for celebrations or logistical challenges that come along."

But the more students handle situations on their own, the more autonomous they will feel and establish agency in their lives. Parents don't need to cut off communication entirely, but may want to gently, gingerly pull back. "Just maintaining what you can provide in terms of availability and love and support from afar is the perfect, gradual kind of fading of that parental involvement and monitoring and always being there," Edlynn says.

It's a delicate balancing act: "To truly love our children, we need to give them space and freedom to grow their own independence."

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