Transitioning Your Child Away to College: What Parents Actually Experience, No Filter
I’m folding my daughter’s faded high school soccer hoodies on the kitchen table last August, the sticky edge of a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich curling up on the placemat beside me. She’s slouched in the chair across from me, scrolling TikTok, one boot propped on the leg of the table. “Mom, stop overfolding,” she says, not looking up from her phone. “I’m just gonna throw everything in a dorm closet anyway. It’s fine.” I smooth out the last hoodie and set it in the duffel. “I know,” I say. “Just habit.”
We drive the three hours to campus, haul the duffels and twin XL sheets up three flights of stairs to her dorm. Her roommate’s mom brought a whole command hook organizer and a stocked first aid kit. I brought 12 boxes of my daughter’s favorite granola bars, because I knew the dining hall food would leave her hungry late at night. We walk around the quad, she points out her intro bio lecture hall, we get iced coffee from the campus shop, and then she checks her watch and says, “Oh, orientation starts in 10 minutes, I gotta go.” She hugs me quick, already turning toward the group of laughing new students by the fountain.
I walk back to my car, sit there for a minute, waiting for the big ugly cry I’d seen in every mom movie ever. It never comes. I start the car and head home. Halfway there, I pull into the grocery store for milk, and my hand reaches for the vanilla yogurt she eats every morning before I remember. I leave it on the shelf and walk away.
Everyone talks about empty nest syndrome, like it’s this one big thing that hits you all at once. What no one tells you is that it’s a hundred tiny little moments, most of them mixed. You don’t just miss your kid. You’re also a little relieved. No more 10pm runs to Walmart for poster board for a last-minute project. No more nagging about turning in homework before the deadline. No more arguing about curfew. But then you turn around and the house is too quiet, and you don’t know what to do with the extra hour you used to spend waiting for them to get home from a date.
I made that obvious mistake the first week. I texted her three times a day: Did you eat? Did you sign up for your lab section? Are you homesick? On Wednesday, I got a one-line text back: Mom I’m fine stop spamming me. I sat on the couch and stared at my phone for a minute, then called my sister, whose son graduated college two years ago. She told me what she’d learned the hard way: don’t assume you know how often they want to hear from you. Just ask. So that night, I texted my daughter: “Fair enough. What works better for you? Me checking in once a week, or you texting me when you have time?” She texted back 10 minutes later: Once a week on Sunday is good. If I need anything I’ll hit you up. We’ve stuck to that for 8 months, and it works for both of us. No more me hovering over my phone waiting for a reply, no more her feeling nagged when she’s trying to sort out her new life.
The next big question everyone asks is what you’re going to do with their room. All the articles say you either keep it exactly the same to make them feel welcome, or you turn it into something new right away to move on. I kept it the same for three months, then I realized I was tripping over my old yoga mat in the hallway, and I wanted a space to work out at home. So I moved my treadmill and weights in. But I left her shelf of YA fantasy books up, and her favorite stuffed bear from when she was little on the corner of the bed. I didn’t have to pick one or the other. There’s no rule that says you have to do it one way. Do whatever fits you, not what some article says you should do.
When she came home for Thanksgiving, I made the mistake of planning the whole weekend around family dinner with grandparents and a trip to see her old high school soccer coach. She texted me the day before she arrived: Going out with Lila and Jake Friday night, is that okay? I said sure, but I was a little hurt. I thought she’d want to spend all her free time with us. Then I realized, her time home isn’t just for our family anymore. She’s building her own life, and her old friends are a big part of that. Now, when she says she’s coming home, I just ask her what she wants to do, instead of filling up the whole calendar. Last month she came home for a long weekend, all she wanted to do was wash all her clothes, eat my spaghetti, and rewatch old episodes of The Office with me on the couch. That’s it. No big plans, no forced family fun. It was way nicer than any big dinner I could have planned.
I also had to figure out what to do with my own time. For 18 years, my schedule revolved around hers: school drop off, soccer practice, parent teacher conferences, college visits. Suddenly, I had 10 extra hours a week I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t go out and get a whole new career or anything. I just made a list of three small things I’d been wanting to do for years but never had time for: take a pottery class, rewatch all the Lord of the Rings movies, learn to make sourdough. I signed up for pottery first. I go every Wednesday. I’m bad at it, most of my mugs come out lopsided, but it’s my thing. That’s all it needs to be.
It’s been 8 months now. Some weeks I don’t think about the change much, the house feels normal, pottery is fun, I don’t accidentally grab the vanilla yogurt anymore. Some weeks I’ll walk past her old shelf in the gym-room, and I’ll miss her so much it feels like a little ache in my chest. She just texted me this Sunday a picture of the stray cat she adopted in the dorm, and asked me to send more granola bars. I still have the sticker she left on the fridge, the one that says “World’s Okayest Mom”, tucked in my phone case. I don’t have this transition figured out. I don’t think anyone does. It’s just a thousand little adjustments, one after another. Some are good, some are hard, most are both. That’s just what it is when your kid grows up and leaves.
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