The Empty Nest

Finally, all the tension of applications, interviews and examinations are over, the mass of form filling is complete and you are driving away from a university leaving behind a slightly nervous-looking new student.

• For them the nervousness will soon evaporate as Freshers/Welcome Week activities and the course get underway.
• If necessary, advice centres, tutors and counselling services will be on hand to provide help and support.

In fact it may well be that you find the transition harder than they do.

• A new student is embarking on an exciting adventure that will lead to new experiences and new possibilities.
• It will be a new beginning for you, too, in some ways, but it will also be an ending and a reminder that time is passing and a new phase of life is beginning.
• Don't under-estimate how long it will take you to adjust.

Then, just as you are settling into a new routine, discovering new things to do as family life takes up less time, the Christmas vacation arrives and you are all together again.

• Your son or daughter is the same person, a few months older, back in the same bedroom and abandoning clothes in the same place on the landing.
• But they will have moved on and grown up in subtle ways.
• You, too, are the same person but you will have moved on as well.

Keeping in touch will help.

• It probably won't be you who is first to get in touch, but keep the contact going as the distractions of term-time mount.
• However, regardless of how long or short the phone calls, texts and emails are, you can't say everything that could be said.
• Indeed, one thing you can be sure of is that you won't get told everything.
• That is probably just as well – it would only make you worry about them even more!

So, however hard you try, the chances are that both of you will behave as though the other hasn't changed a bit.

• They will expect their bedroom to be exactly as they left it and your routines to be the same as ever.
• You will expect them to behave just as they used to.

You will almost certainly both be wrong and there will be another process of readjustment to go through.