When Your Kid Leaves for College: What Parents Actually Experience During the Transition
Last August, I stood in the cinder-block dorm hallway holding a crumpled receipt for twin XL sheets we’d run out to buy an hour earlier. My daughter’s new roommate was already perched on her bed, FaceTiming her boyfriend, and a group of kids from down the hall were yelling about a pre-game party that night. My husband had hauled the last box up the stairs and was leaning against our car scrolling football scores, giving us a minute. When my daughter hugged me, it was quick, one arm, her phone already in her other hand. “Text me when you get home,” she said, and glanced over my shoulder at a kid with a guitar who’d just knocked on the open door. I walked out and didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel like crying until 45 minutes later, when I stopped for gas on the turnpike and stood at the pump staring at my credit card for three full minutes, trying to remember how to insert it.
The drive home was too quiet. We didn’t talk much, just nodded along to an old radio station we’d picked up halfway. When we walked in the front door, the house felt wrong, like it had shifted while we were gone. I walked down the hall to my daughter’s room, and it was exactly how she’d left it: a faded hoodie draped over the desk chair, a half-empty bottle of iced coffee on the nightstand, stickers peeling off the edge of her mirror. Everyone had told me I’d want to turn it into a home gym or a guest room the second she left. A friend of mine had done that the week after her son moved out, posted photos of the new yoga setup on Instagram. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up the iced coffee bottle for two weeks.
That first week, I kept doing things out of habit without thinking. I set an extra place at dinner. I bought her favorite vanilla yogurt at the grocery store, then let it go bad in the back of the fridge. I’d text her things like “did you get the care package I sent?” and not get a reply for 10 hours, just a short “yea thanks 😊”. I’d sit on the couch twisting my phone in my hand, overthinking every word I’d sent, wondering if I’d messed up, if she was hurt or lonely and not telling me.
One night I called my cousin, whose son was a sophomore in college, and she admitted she’d done the exact same thing her first month. She suggested we try setting a pre-agreed check-in time that worked for both of our schedules. We landed on Sunday at 7 pm, after my daughter’s morning classes and afternoon shift at the campus coffee shop, before her weekly study group. That way, I don’t spend half my day sending random texts waiting for a reply, and she doesn’t feel guilty for putting her new life on hold to check in with me. Some weeks we talk for 40 minutes, some weeks it’s 10, but I know when it’s coming, and she knows when to expect me. It’s a small change, but it cut my anxiety about missing her by more than half.
Two weeks in, I got a call at 9 pm, and she was crying so hard I could barely understand her. She’d failed her first chemistry quiz, her roommate brought people back to the room till 2 am three nights in a row, and she couldn’t find any vegan food on campus that wasn’t just french fries. My first instinct was to grab my keys, drive three hours up there, pull her out of the dorm and bring her home, find her a new roommate, yell at the professor for grading too hard. But I remembered what another parent had told me a few weeks before move-in: they don’t always need you to fix the whole problem right away. Most of the time, they just need help taking one small step.
So I didn’t offer to come get her. I said, “Pull up the campus food guide on your phone. What’s the name of that vegan café that’s 10 minutes off campus? I’m sending you a $25 DoorDash gift card right now so you can get something good for dinner. Then, pull up your TA’s email address. Tell me what you want to say about extra help, and I’ll sit here while you send it. You don’t have to talk anymore if you don’t want to after that.” She did that, we hung up 20 minutes later, and she texted me the next day to say the food was good and the TA agreed to meet her every week. I didn’t have to fix anything. I just had to help her fix the first small thing.
What no one really tells you is that this transition isn’t just the kid’s big step. It’s your big step too, and you don’t get a rulebook. For 18 years, your whole day is shaped around small, constant things: waking them up for school, packing their lunch, asking how their test went, leaving the porch light on when they’re out late. All that disappears overnight, and you’re left walking around your own house like you’re a guest sometimes. You feel guilty for being sad, because this is what you worked for, right? You wanted them to go off and have their own life. And sometimes you feel guilty for being happy, because you go to a dinner with your spouse on a Friday night without rushing home to a curfew, and it’s nice, but you feel like you’re not supposed to admit that.
I think the biggest mistake I see other parents make is rushing themselves. They feel like they have to immediately adjust, immediately clear out the room, immediately stop thinking about their kid every five minutes. The truth is, you can take it as slow as you want. I left my daughter’s room exactly how it was until Thanksgiving break, when she came home and mentioned she wanted me to wash all her bed sheets anyway. I still haven’t moved any of her old soccer trophies or middle school yearbooks out. I don’t know if I ever will, and that’s okay.
Last week, I found her old retainer case in the back of the junk drawer, the chipped one with the Hogwarts crest she begged for when she was 13. I held it for a minute, then put it back where I found it. This Sunday, we did our usual check-in. She told me she got that work study job at the campus library she’d applied for, she’s made friends with a girl on her floor who also likes hiking, and that vegan café I sent her to has become her go-to on Fridays. We talked for 14 minutes, then she said her friends were waiting for her to go to the homecoming game, so she had to go. I hung up, made myself a cup of tea, and walked down the hall. Her door is still cracked open, just like it was when she was in high school and doing homework. Some days the quiet still feels too big. Some days it feels just right. None of it is linear, and none of it is wrong. We’re both transitioning, one Sunday call at a time.
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