IT'S A NIGHTMARE. She I was in the States for four months now she stays out until 4 or 5 a.m. without ringing, or her boyfriend stays until 5.30 a.m. And if I'm worried, I lie awake waiting for her to get home and the next day I hear myself sounding just like my mother, saying things I never thought I'd say. If I had enough money, I think I'd definitely invest it in buying a flat for her."

Nuala was delighted when her eldest child, a second year university student, got a summer job abroad, and hadn't anticipated any problems when she came home. But the re-adjustments that young adults and their parents have to make to each other after a child has tasted real independence for the first time surprise many families.

And if it's tough on parents, it's probably even harder for their child.

Susan, who like Nuala's daughter is 19, arrived home from a summer job in Europe a few days ago. The first day home, everything was fine.

But then it started "I mean I survived on my own in Holland for three months, found a job, a place to stay, made new friends, took care of myself. Why nag me about `are you eating enough?' or `your room needs to be tidied'?

"It just wrecks my head, so the second night I just felt `get me out of here'. I went down to my friend's house, forgot to ring home, didn't get back til 4 a.m. and found the door was locked and chained. So I had to ring the bell, and of course they were cross, big time.

"Next day I got the lecture. You just have to fit into the family."

Susan is second eldest of a family of five, and her mother is philosophical about the problem. Like most parents or students who've been through the experience before, she reckons it will only take a few days for everything to settle back to normal.

"When Susan's older sister came back from England last year, she was up in her room, smoking, radio blaring she couldn't understand that the younger children had to go to bed, get up for school in the morning. You're dying for them to come home but it's definitely hard for at least a couple of days they've had a run of freedom and now they have to be one of a unit, have to fit back into the family."

Marie Murray, principal clinical psychologist at St Joseph's adolescent unit in St Vincent's psychiatric hospital, Dublin, and student counsellor Ann McCourt from TCD's student counselling service say this re-adjustment is not a major issue for most young adults and their parents. Most parents Nuala and her husband and Susan's parents included already give third level students freedom to organise their own lives, to stay out very late and so on.

SO THOUGH it may be irksome to have to be accountable to your parents after months of real freedom, the consensus is that the tension of the next few weeks will pass quickly, and everything will get sorted out when colleges reopen and routines are re-established. How families work out demands for even greater freedom will depend, however, on how parents have negotiated issues of independence up to now.

According to Murray, "if there have been difficulties in the acquisition of appropriate independence moving through the stages of childhood and adolescence, there are more likely to be difficulties in managing this stage. The age of dependence has been extended dramatically, and this brings with it problems that an adult must also remain in the family `as if' a dependent child. But most families seem to negotiate it pretty well."

The fact is, she says, that if issues of dependence and independence, autonomy and control, are serious enough to need clinical help, this will usually become obvious when children are younger rather than late adolescence. And if he or she is that serious, a young adult may well solve the problem by leaving home, even if it means not going to third level.

Ann McCourt believes that for most students living at home, issues of independence are at most, an irritant. She advises parents "Back off. Your child survived abroad and came back home. Accept that this may be a sensitive time for them. And talk to other parents."

Both McCourt and Murray suggest that young adults remember the advantages to living at home meals provided, usually laundry service, the comfort of familiarity. All most parents want is that children telephone to let them know if they're going to be really late, or absent for the evening meal. (Susan's mother, who always has dinner at 7 p.m., is particularly touchy about this teenagers say mothers have a harder time than fathers letting go the reins.)

Most parents feel this isn't oppression, but common courtesy, and this, says Murray, is essential "mutual respect, compromise between the need for autonomy of the young person and the need for stability of family life".

Anyone who went away to college, or left home in their late teens, may think that young adults would grow up quicker and have a better relationship with their parents if they could all leave home at that age. For many families in rural areas, it's not even an option children must leave for work or college.

However, you don't have to leave home to grow up, Murray says. Whether living in a flat, digs or at home, young adults like their parents have to live with some restrictions.

Still, though a summer job abroad is only "a short burst of freedom", as one young man describes it, it is likely to help with that growing up. Even Susan, still fretting over loss of freedom, says, there is more respect on both sides. And I do understand for the first time the cost of everything, appreciate the great job my parents have done in sending us all to school and college."