When College Is Close to Home, What are the Boundaries? Rebecca Glanzer, a sophomore at Columbia University, goes home to Brooklyn frequently to see her dog, not her parents, her mother said. "I was the last person people thought would stay in their hometown for college," said Laura Johnson, a senior at Macalester College who lives in a house a half-hour walk from her home in St. Paul. Even my parents wondered why I wasn't going away. Her mother, Maggie Wirth-Johnson, acknowledged her puzzlement, as Laura's choices included Stanford, Barnard and the University of California at Berkeley. "But then I wondered why going away to college has become such a big deal," Ms. Wirth-Johnson said, adding, "I really liked Laura's reasons for choosing Macalester. It was the right place for her even if it was incredibly close by. College students on popular TV shows are often homebodies, like John-Boy, who lived at the Walton home while attending the fictional Boatwright University; Rory Gilmore of "The Gilmore Girls," who resided at Yale but seemed to be in Stars Hollow more than in her dorm room; and Axl Heck, from the ABC show "The Middle," who this season will head to college a mere 45 minutes from his folks. But boundary issues can be tricky when you do not need your child home every week for plot development. "It was hard at first because I wanted Laura to immerse herself completely on campus, but I also wanted her to come home for family birthdays," Ms. Wirth-Johnson said. Leslie Gardner, who lives in Brooklyn and whose daughter, Rebecca Glanzer, is a sophomore at Columbia University, echoed the same sentiment. "I worried that it would be too easy for me to access her," she said. But I also worried that she might access me too much. Both mothers said they waited patiently the first few weeks of college for their daughters to reach out to them. "Three weeks after classes started, Rebecca finally wanted to see me," Ms. Gardner said. "She asked me to meet her for lunch in midtown conveniently next to the J. Crew store, where she needed a few things," she recalled, laughing. Ms. Wirth-Johnson remembered Laura not coming home until Halloween, but then, unexpectedly, she began bumping into her at the Whole Foods store. "I always felt obligated to buy her groceries," she said. For Scotti Parrish, an associate professor of English at the University of Michigan, avoiding her two oldest children, Xander Judge, now a senior at Michigan, and Grace Judge, a sophomore at the university, was easier than she imagined. "Xander deliberately requested to live on North Campus as far away from our house as was physically possible," she said. And I went on sabbatical last year. What's more, Dr. Parrish knew better than to venture downtown on certain days. "I stay home, for instance, on St. Patrick's Day," she said. I don't want to see my students, much less my own kids, vomiting in an alleyway. But it is not just parents who want to avoid that confrontation. "Lately, it has been getting more treacherous as my parents have started to go to some of the same bars I hit with my friends," Laura Johnson said. I can't tell you how mortified I would be if they showed up when I was out on a date or drunk. Others can't help but give in to the lure of their family living quarters. "My freshman dorm was shockingly close to my parent's home," said Thatcher Foster, who grew up in Princeton, N.J. and is a senior at Princeton. I have to admit I went home a lot in the beginning. I would tell my roommate I was going to the library, but then sneak off to watch a football game with my dad. Ms. Glanzer's mother said she comes home often, but not to see her parents. "She wants to see our dog, Winston," she said. Half the time we are not even there. I have learned not to take it personally. For Anna Johnson (the twin of Laura), transferring to Macalester after spending her freshman year on the other side of the country was a challenge.