Letting go

Academic life with kids at the elementary school age is all about checking to make sure homework is done, helping if there are any "failure to understand" issues, and checking with the teacher when your child just isn't "getting it". This is all pretty straight forward parenting, and although it is disheartening when your child is lagging behind while others are catching on quickly in a specific area, it's not very difficult to determine what to do about the issue..............tutoring, summer school, etc.
What I am finding really difficult these days is how to deal with these same issues at a high school level. I am no longer informed of all of the homework assigned, I don't really have a clear idea as to how my children are doing in school on a day to day basis as I'm no longer at their classroom door chatting it up with the teacher, and therefore I am coming to the conclusion that I must begin to give up my power of "making sure" they're responsible academically, and trust that I've taught them enough in the early years to eventually get them to be responsible themselves. This is incredibly scary, but is seeming more and more necessary. All of those after school questions -( do you have any homework? do you have any projects that you should be working on? do you have a novel that you should be reading?) are slowly getting dropped as I'm beginning to see that in order to make my kids responsible, I need to let them suffer the consequences of being irresposible. Parenting is about eventually being able to let go, and as difficult as I'm finding this first stage of their independance, I think that I'm coming to terms with the fact that it is (unfortunately for this overprotective she bear) incredibly necessary.