Frank DiMeo/Cornell University

Christine Schelhas-Miller poses with her new book about parenting college-age children.

Your college freshman finally comes home for a break, dumps the laundry on the floor and disappears for most of the week.

Your daughter is devastated: She was rushed but received no sorority bids.

Your college junior wants more money in order to live in an apartment or for him to go on an expensive "educational" trip.

Your son seems so stressed at college but won't say much anymore.

What's going on? What should you do? What shouldn't you do?

The answers are in a new nuts-and-bolts parenting book for your child's college years -- so often fraught with concerns, conflicts and crises unique to this stage of life.

The book, Don't Tell Me What to Do, Just Send Money: The Essential Parenting Guide to the College Years, is written by adolescent and young adult development experts Helen E. Johnson and Christine Schelhas-Miller (St. Martin's Griffin, 2000). It offers strategies and advice for reshaping parental relationships with emerging adult children during the college years and coping with the major issues that parents of college students face.

Schelhas-Miller teaches adolescent development at Cornell University and is a consultant to independent, secondary schools on issues related to adolescent development. She also has provided academic, personal and career counseling to students at four universities over the past two decades. Co-author Johnson was the founder and former director of Cornell's first Parents' Program. She has worked in higher education for more than two decades as a career center director, assistant dean of students and as a writer and lecturer on careers, parent-adolescent communication and parenting college-age students. She is also the parent of two recent college graduates.

Chock-full of humorous dialogue, realistic and poignant case examples and practical advice (and "Doonesbury" cartoon strips to introduce chapters), this comprehensive, 348-page guide covers issues from "the dreaded drop-off" (when parents say goodbye to new college students at residence halls) to dealing with disappointing postgraduate decisions. The authors creatively present highly readable, concrete and reassuring advice on how to navigate through the post high school years, including sidebar features, such as "What to Do, What to Avoid" for each situation and "What's On Your Mind, What's on Your Child's Mind" for both sides of a problem.

"In essence, we encourage parents to adopt a mentor/adviser role," says Schelhas-Miller. "Using actual examples, we show ways to relinquish control and, instead, provide guidance and support. We also offer communication and problem-solving strategies to support the development of a healthy adult-to-adult relationship that will serve parents well in the years to come."

College presents an opportunity for students to explore who they are outside of their family group, the authors explain, and "try on" new identities. Schelhas-Miller says, "This can be troubling for a parent. What parent hasn't waited anxiously by a silent phone for news from college or wondered, 'Why is my child so independent one minute and confused and indecisive the next?' or 'How will I know if my son is in trouble and what I should do about it?' or 'Why does my daughter seem to be rejecting all of the values we taught her?'

"Parents worry they are 'losing' their child during the college years, but, in fact, they are in the process of observing their child become an independent adult. This is a necessary stage of development for a late adolescent -- a prerequisite to becoming independent and eventually interdependent with parents and family. There is a delicate balance of 'letting go' but still maintaining a strong and respectful relationship," Schelhas-Miller says.

The authors based Don't Tell Me What t o Do, Just Send Money not only on the two decades of experience each has working with college students and their parents but also on focus groups conducted in seven cities with parents of college students and college juniors. They also consulted hundreds of autobiographies written by Cornell students, and Johnson surveyed 18,000 parents and conducted counseling sessions with hundreds of parents and college students.

Among the book's many topics are those dealing with money issues; adjustment issues from weight control and Greek life to stress; high-risk behaviors, such as drugs, drinking and sex; identity issues, from friends and lovers to "coming out" crises, from mental illness to rape to violent crime; flunking or dropping out; and decisions concerning life after college.