alt Hacker NewsHonestly telling your kid going off to college (or elsewhere) "you have to take everything from you care about, the rest is going to go away" seems like a good way to stunt their independence. The natural reaction would be to take as much as they can of their current life, which is then going to be a burden preventing them from growing into a new life.
When you put it this way, it is very anxiety inducing and I understand that. What this is helping me realize is that my childhood, and our lives of our children were different than many of the commenters, not necessarily better or worse.
As children, my siblings and I didn't have a lot of stuff, and our family didn't have a lot of stuff either. It certainly wasn't our intent to traumatize and stunt our children and this doesn't seem to be the case. I will certainly ask them.