Moms Talk: Empty Nesting

Each week the Mentor Patch Moms Council answers a question on parenthood posed to them by readers or another member of council.

This week's question: How do you deal with the ensuing emotions when one your children moves out, whether it be for college or other reasons? Moreover, what does one do with an "empty nest?"

Gloria Kilfoyle:

This is a very easy question for me to answer since my husband and I have had four children graduate from college who are enjoying their careers, marriages, and children.

Of course, I cried at each graduation, realizing that my life was going to change, too. Now that I have five grandchildren from my three sons and their wives and that my daughter has a very good career as an engineer, I am happy seeing them happy.

I will say that my life is great because I have a wonderful and caring husband. I guess that is part of this time of life -- having a loving husband and being able to do things with him, too.

The other trick to this part of life is to keep in contact with the children. We do this, naturally, by loving to babysit. But there are other ways, too. We have a family camping trip each year at one of the Ohio parks. (The grandchildren keep track of what parks we have visited.)

 Also, we try to get together for holidays. Everyone has a holiday assigned to have the family over. In the summer we have pizza picnics at the Mentor water park with the grandchildren that are in the area.

We have tried to keep our door open to all of our children. We try not to interfere in their lives (sometimes, it is hard for me to keep my mouth shut but I manage) and make it clear that we are ready and willing to help out in any way we can if asked.

My life has changed, but in some ways it is even more fun since I don't have all the responsibility of raising children. The best thing is to have a grand time as a family.

Having fun and laughter is the best; but it means planning, planning, planning on how to do it together because of time constraints. (It also means ignoring some foibles of relatives and in-laws.)

Donna Milnes:

When my girls went off to college, I was worried about their safety -- if they were eating, if classes were going well, etc.

But I knew in my heart that we had prepared them well and they would be alright.

I think the worst thing about being empty nesters was that the phone never rang.  The quiet was deafening. I would wish for the salespeople to call! (Not really.)

It has been some years now and the girls have families of their own so my husband and I have time to enjoy the home we have and friends that we neglected in the past. Life is good.