“Do I Have To Go To College?”

For parents of sleepless young ones, the celebrity of Adam Mansbach is hard to overstate. Bleary-eyed and maybe a little despairing, that first time a parent picks up his tome Go the F*ck to Sleep can be a little transcendent. The irreverent picture book perfectly captures the complex feelings we all experience with toddlers — of being trapped in an exhausting simmering pot of cuddles and dependence and sweetness and frustration. Mansbach let it boil over and we parents found a cathartic laugh. 15 years later, Mansbach is tapping once again into the impossible feelings of parents who are about to send off their children — now teens — to the world, to college. Go the F*ck to College, which is available now everywhere you gets books, is just as sweet, sardonic, and endearingly cathartic as Go the F*ck to Sleep. Even for those of us with pre-teens, it’s a wonderful reminder that the parenting journey is long and fraught, difficult and beautiful — and that it would do use good to find a little humor in it. Here, Adam Mansbach reflects, with fewer curse words and no pictures, on the swirling state he finds himself in as he grapples with just how ready his child is to embark on their own into the world. - Tyghe Trimble, Fatherly A few weeks ago, as I sat at my desk ordering a cap and gown for my graduating high school senior, the kid in question sent me a text: Do I really have to go to college? My heart rate soared as I typed an answer: I mean, we already bought the sweatshirts. (…