No time for the empty nest blues… except sometimes

Posted on 12/08/2017 0 CommentPosted by Christine Hogan in Empty Nesters

Sharon Greenthal names some reasons she’s glad her kids are grown up.

As I watched my youngest packing boxes to head back to university for his final year, I felt a mixture of pride – he’s all grown up (almost!) and also a tinge of the empty nest blues. I guess that never really ends, but it does get easier. I’ve grown to love the empty nest, and so will you.

Much as I miss many parts of being a parent of school-aged children, there are many reasons I’m glad my kids are grown up…

1. Filling out the same forms with the same information every.single.year. Maybe it’s different now, but back in the day (um, that would be 2010), for my school, we still had to fill them out by hand. Most in duplicate, a few in triplicate.

2. Being the ATM for everything from school lunches to books, fees, donations, classroom supplies, excursions etc.

3. Handing out more money for tutors, activity fees, uniforms, costumes, etc.

4. Making lunches and then having the lunches come home in the backpacks, uneaten (“I just wanted chips, mum”).

5. Ferrying kids around to sport!

6. Waking my son up for school every morning for 12 years. Every morning. He gets himself up now that he’s at uni. We’re so proud.

7. Small talk in the parking lot waiting to pick up your kid with the mum whose kid is better than yours at everything.

8. Buying two dozen mechanical pencils for my son who promptly lost them all or gave them away within 48 hours of starting school. Every year. You’d think I would have learned.

9. Buying clothes for my daughter that she wore once and never again. A few weeks into the school year, she would default to a school sweatshirt and jeans, hair in a messy bun, more often than not.

This story first appeared on scarymommy.