It’s a jittery time for students and parents: when the child heads off to college for the first time.

The potential pitfalls are numerous. So how do you help your teen navigate these new waters?

As corny and trite as it might sound, communication is the key here: what parents say, how they say it, and what they don’t say will help their child get off on the right foot at the university level, and not fall trap to problems like eating disorders, drug abuse and binge drinking.

Alexander Danielides, a college senior at Duke University, recalls the the exciting and confusing times of freshman year. “I think definitely at the beginning, especially the first month of school it is crazy, every night you are going out.”

“It can be a highly susceptible time for kids going off to college because often times in high school there is a comfort level there, there they found their niche. That sense of belonging are wiped clean. This is the time for mental health issues and especially eating disorders with young woman,” says Dr. Farhan Matin, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital.

There is no question, for problems such as eating disorders, alcoholism, and drug abuse, including the latest--prescription drug abuse--there is a genetic, biological component. Some kids, quite simply, are more susceptible than others. However, all kids are at risk, and one key is a good line of communication with the parents.

“In many cases there is nothing really anyone to do to fully prevent these things from happening, however having a good healthy relationship with the parents. That is something I can’t stress enough,” says Dr. Matin.

Still, though, peer pressure can be a powerful negative force among new, uncertain college freshmen.

“We certainly see a group of adolescents who cant wait to get to college so they can experiment with all kinds of things not only drugs but also sexual encounters and staying up late at night and anything else they might of wanted to do back in high school but were not allowed to, what we find is that in terms of what the parents can do for this kid is being over permissive or being overly authoritarian does not work, so the two big extremities are the biggest problem in parental practices,” advises Dr. Petros Levounis, Chief of Addiction Psychiatry at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital.

But an adult conversation with your child--say, to show the latest headline of someone who died in a car crash after drinking--goes a much longer way than a lecture.
You do have to guide them—carefully--but eventually, they’ll get it.

The doctors believe that by talking to the kids about their own experience with drugs and alcohol, that can also add weight to the “don’t abuse drugs and don’t drink” lesson.

Another factor that helps: good grades! Kids who do well have a lower risk of drug and alcohol abuse. So, monitor the grades carefully.

“You have to realize that and pull yourself together, you have to know you cant go out every night and party every night because otherwise you lose yourself and when you lose yourself you lose the whole point of going to college which is for the higher education,” says Daniel.

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