Parents,Sons and Daughters:

This selective review highlights some representative types of problems students and parents experience during the college years. The key issue is adaptation to change. Academic work impairment, disruptions in parent-child and family relationships, interpersonal problems with peers as well as teachers at college can, more often than not, be related to the "normal" developmental changes occurring both in parents and college students whose life cycles and developmental tasks intersect and interact. These tasks and related problems include students' separation and independence from parents, imparied academic work performance, social and sexual difficulties, and severe emotional problems including suicidal and psychotic behavior. In this presentation neither panaceas nor easy solutions to student emotional problems are offered. Instead, an attempt is made to provide a psychological perspective, to clarify the issues, to suggest ways of avoiding certain problems and, where problems already exist, to show possible directions for successful outcomes.