To the mama whose baby flew the nest

My daughter has been a college student for two years, and I’m still getting used to it. Honestly, it was a little harder than I expected. I wasn’t the mom who cried when I took her to school the first day of kindergarten. But about halfway through that year her teacher had to take me aside and say gently, “You really don’t need to stay for 20 minutes every morning when you drop her off.”  So it’s like I’m not super attached—but also, I’m super attached.

Whether you are counting down the days until your kid leaves home or are working hard to convince them to take a gap year and just stay with you forever, here are five tips that helped me get through the first years without my kid.

5 tips for coping when your grown child leaves home

1. Have an older mom friend

One of my dearest friends is 20 years older than I am. This has been a blessing to me for years. For one thing, I always feel young around her. (Thanks, friend!) But for another, she has been through everything with her three kids who are all now adults. 

Her kids had normal and terrible things happen when they were teens. They studied abroad, made bad decisions, went to college, didn’t go to college, had bad relationships, had great relationships. Every phase my daughter has gone through or will go through is something I have been able to hash out with this friend.

And seeing the relationships my friend has with her two grown daughters and son helps me remember that my daughter leaving for college doesn’t mean my girl is gone for good. My friend has great relationships with her kids, goes on trips with them, visits them often, and talks to them all the time. Through my friend’s experiences as a parent, I see that my daughter and I have a lot of wonderful new phases ahead in our relationship.

In other words, repeat after me: this isn’t the end.

2. Have lots of different mom friends

 Along those same lines, having a variety of mom friends has really served me well. When my daughter was younger, other moms really stressed me out by comparing nap times and sleep schedules and who was eating what. It was a lot.

But as the years have passed and my mom friends and I all found our own ways of parenting, it’s been so helpful to see that there are lots of different ways that we all do everything, including shepherding our kids through the last of their teen years. Now that our kids are grown(ish), our conversations feel less competitive and more ruminative and supportive. Now I feel like there’s no one better to talk to than other moms.

3. Give your kid space but always, as much as possible, be available

I’ve never really been a helicopter parent—not exactly (see above). One of the things that’s worked really well for me and my daughter is that I don’t pry into her life, but she also shares a lot with me. I know—it’s a chicken or egg situation, right? Does she share because I don’t push or do I not push because she spills the tea to me on the regular? How did we even get this way?

I think part of what made our relationship like that is that we spent a ton of time together when she was young. Her dad died when she was 5, so it was just us for a long time. So many school nights involved me sitting in her bed with her for two hours. Sometimes it was me reading while she did homework, the two of us watching a silly Disney show together when homework was done, or me listening neutrally while she talked about what was going on in her life before she fell asleep. I was just there. I didn’t push or pry; I was just around a lot.

Now that she’s farther away, we text a good bit, but I still make a point of not getting too interrogative about anything she isn’t sharing with me. The minute she calls me, though, I try to make sure I am there. Ready to listen. Being available still feels like a really important thing.

4. Keep dedicated one-on-one time

I got married four years ago and the two-person unit my daughter and I had been in for years expanded to include a stepdad and two step-sisters. When my daughter comes home from college, we all spend a lot of time together, and I love that about our blended family. The girls get along well, and we love to have family dinners, watch episodes of “Nailed It”, and go for ice cream runs together. But I still need that one-on-one time with my girl. This is essential to our relationship.

Whenever she’s home, we make sure to spend an afternoon together, or at least have a meal for just the two of us. We’ll get sushi, go to Target, and just have some time together in the car to talk about her life, our family and how everything is going for her in all those realms. I imagine this is important for kids in any family, but I always see how beneficial it is for my relationship with my daughter, especially as we have less time together.

5. Spread your own wings  

At some point during my daughter’s first year of college, I realized I had started a blog, spent time developing three new side hustle ideas, and auditioned for a community theater play. And I have a full-time job. Suddenly time is different—it’s almost all mine again! I have a husband and two teenage stepdaughters, but they don’t need me the way my daughter did for 18 years straight.

It’s as if while my daughter is out in the world experiencing life on her own terms and trying new things, I get to do the same thing.

When our kids leave the nest, they aren’t the only ones who have new opportunities and possibilities ahead. As parents, we do too.

And taking advantage of this time to enrich our own lives will only give us more to share with our kids when they come back home to us.

All the phases of parenting have their challenges. I know that in my journey as a parent, each time a sea change came (elementary school, puberty, TikTok) I’d take a deep breath and do my best. The shift of sending my daughter out of the nest has felt that way too, and just like all those other times, ultimately, it’s working out just fine. Having supportive mom friends, holding space for my daughter, and re-discovering myself outside of parenting have made it work for me. I hope it will for you too.