This column is the latest in a series on parenting children in the final years of high school, "Emptying the Nest."

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I recently saw a headline in the New York Times that I thought was the answer to my prayers: "Anxious Parents are the Ones Who Need Help."

Yes, please, I thought, hoping to find acknowledgment of all the very real forces that can turn any parent into an anxious mess.

Things like school shootings, worsening teen mental health, the ongoing debate over the danger of smartphones, the rising cost of a college education, the growing restrictions on female reproductive rights, the housing crisis, the opioid crisis, the fentanyl crisis, and, of course, the climate crisis.

As I prepare to launch my third child out of the nest, my personal and parental anxiety is at a fever pitch; I'll take any offer of help I can get.

Alas, it was not to be. The piece, written by a senior staff psychiatrist at Boston University Health Services, focused exclusively on parental anxieties that can arise during a child's college experience, particularly freshman year.

In a tone as kind and generous as possible, the author advised parents to just try to detach and chill.

It's something parents hear all the time, when they are not being inundated with every type of story that can fit under the headline "The Kids Are Not Alright": Modern American parents need to stop trying to control every moment of their children's lives and relax.

Wouldn't that be nice? To just, you know, let it all go and relax?

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