As Parents Weekend commences, it’s important to remember that as much as students may appreciate having involved parents (and as much as parents may love being involved), the incessant whirring of helicopter parents is not a pleasant sound – and it’s only getting louder.

According to Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, 77 percent of the colleges it surveyed reported that parental involvement is increasing. Some blame it on over-protective parents. Others call it a symptom of the “Me Generation.” In any case, parents who hover over their students do them more harm than good.

Recent studies have shown that over-involvement on the parents’ part can have a negative impact on students’ abilities to work and think for themselves. One recent study claims that hovering parents may have a direct impact on their children’s personality, creating neurotic, dependent, self-conscious individuals. Horror stories abound in the news, in which parents called professors, deans or even workplace bosses to intervene for their children.

For the sake of the freshmen who are in the process of adjusting to college life and the graduating seniors who are on the verge of the biggest choices of their lives, parents need to take a step back. They need not stick around for extra days after New Student Orientation, nor call every time we don’t call back, nor step in and make our decisions for us. We’ll never grow up that way.

Sure, the transition into and out of college is challenging. Upon embarking on their Hilltop experience, students encounter new cultures, harder academics and a fresh, sometimes intimidating, social scene. Students face the prospect of living on their own time schedules, perhaps for the first time. Some are on their own financially. Some have never spent a day away from their parents before.

An adjustment will have to occur, but Georgetown is well equipped to help new students deal with the transition. Academic deans, counselors at Counseling and Psychiatric Services and professors are mindful of students struggling with the stress of fitting in. Students – if they will ever be able to function on their own – must learn to cope with difficulties in their own individual ways.

For those students who are leaving the Georgetown bubble to finally enter the real world, the prospect of the transition in May can be even more daunting. Career and Option Fairs as well as the Career Center can direct students toward the next step in their lives. But for these students, the path to independence should not begin when they graduate. It needs to be a gradual process, and it will be more satisfying for students if they can look back on their accomplishments and think of them as their own doing – not their parents’.

All of this is not to say that students don’t need parents. Moderating their level of engagement does not mean mothers and fathers are absent from their sons’ and daughters’ lives completely. Students need and will always need the support networks their families provide for them. As students’ worlds change and transitions occur, parents and families are the much-needed constants in their lives.

It’s merely the hovering, the coddling and the babying that are ultimately crippling for students these days. The sooner parents move on to their new guiding roles, the sooner students will be able to command the direction of their own lives. They just have to trust us – we’re not leaving forever. They raised us well; we just need some time to figure out how to be on our own.