I am not a mother. I am a cheque-writing machine. Know the feeling?

Just when you think they're almost grown up and it's going to get easier, it suddenly gets a whole lot worse.

Legally, you are meant to be an adult when you are 18. You get the vote and can get drunk, get married, watch mucky films and generally be held responsible for your own life.

Unless you're a student.

They might be adults, but their eligibility for a full loan ( a loan, mind you, not a grant) is partly dependent on their parents' income. So much for maturity and independence.

Then there are tuition fees and accommodation...

Back in the golden days of the 1960s when I was a student, I had my grant cheque in my hot little hand and I paid my repulsive landlord in real money when he, or his minion, called every fortnight. It was nothing to do with my parents, a few hundred miles away. When we wanted to move flats we gave two weeks' notice and moved on. Easy peasy.

Not any more.

No doubt through bitter experience - and who really can blame them? - anyone who these days has anything to do with students doesn't trust them an inch when it comes to money. Instead, they insist on dealing with parents, having everything signed up, done through a bank and - unless I suddenly decide to flee the country, which is increasingly tempting - regular payments in blood ever after.

That's why, last year, Manchester Metropolitan University had two standing orders out of me - one for the £1,050 fees, paid in three chunks, and another for the room in hall - £2,600, plus £100 deposit and another £50 if he wanted a parking place.

What's worse you are now tied into contracts for the entire academic year. No more of this finding a better place and wheeling your possessions round in an old pram. You've paid the money, signed the direct debit, you're stuck. Yes, of course, you could find someone else to take your place, but they're all also signed in to ten-month contracts. Which is why last year I was still paying rent for a house in Leeds, while Senior Son had long since left it to live at home and work in the pie factory.

Now he's lying around at home again (bed in the morning, sofa in the evening, a chap has to have a routine) and I'm already paying rent for a house in Manchester for next term. The property company had to have my bank details before they'd give him the key.

Then there'll be another lot of tuition fees. This year - because he's on industrial placement and has no lectures, no tutorials, absolutely no tuition of any sort - the fees are only £525. A snip.

Meanwhile, in nearly every post, more letters come for the lad. Banks and finance companies offer him credit cards, loans, instant access to vast sums of money. The offers are so tempting, the deals so enticing, that it's easy to see how teenagers succumb.

The banks are quite happy to lend small fortunes to an unemployed student with an overdraft big enough to match Barclays' advertising campaign. They clearly think he's grown up enough to cope.

The university knows differently. They could just be right. Pass me my cheque book...