Just back from last kid’s college graduation. Filled with gratitude that he has finished school. Will not miss that giant sucking sound of $$$ leaving my account for tuition. But… A little off kilter about no longer being Mom Of College Student. Anyone else feelin’ it?
Grad school 
Hugs. Take some professional advancement/continuing ed classes. That will cure the blues quickly!
It’s now Mom of a Recent Grad or Mom of Launched Kids. I love this new period in their lives and ours with them. My younger grad’d last year.
It’s always bittersweet when kids move onto the next phase of their lives. Remember the bittersweet feeling when they “graduated” from preschool?
Having all out of school is a family milestone, as well as an individual one for each graduate. Time to reflect and remember, yet celebrate the next phase.Getting kids through higher ed structures a lot for a couple. Going forward, we make our own parameters more often. Totally get why it’s a moment.
Through a variety of variables, both our kids were finished with their educations (as far as we can guess for now) within 2 months of each other. I am loving being mom to two caring and interesting working adults. I’ll have to mist up at some else’s graduation now.
My kids are so old, they didn’t have moving up ceremonies till 5th/6th gd!
I just have fond memories, I barely remember not sleeping more than a few hrs for months at a time, until I see someone out with their young kids during the arsenic hour, then I remember " many days when I had to leave my groceries at the checkout counter, because they were just * losing* it."
I’m not great with transitions either, but with every change, you learn something, and something new to appreciate.
Time to define yourself by something that is about you! You’ll always be a mom and do “mom” things no matter what their age - but YOU are and can be so much more than that!!!
Been there. Yep.
My youngest son will graduate college next May 2016. On Monday, I sat and watched the live stream of his school’s graduation ceremony (mostly to hear Stephen Colbert) but I cried like a baby :(( So yea…I feel your pain!
I thought nothing could match the accelerated growth my first child experienced in the mere not-quite-48 hours from when I left for the hospital to deliver her younger sibling to when I arrived home with a newborn; she went from a tiny toddler to a much older child. Last summer she left for college a young high school graduate whose life and friends were consolidated in a few zip codes. A beautiful, happy, vivacioius young woman, obviously years older than my oldest child was last summer, recently arrived on my door step. She’s unpacking stuff in my older daughter’s bedroom, and I believe she is staying for a summer visit. I think she has my child in there, somewhere.
Hugs…lots of hugs. When our last child graduated high school I felt that I had just been fired from the best job EVER.
Life changed…life will continue to change…and while I HATE change we are still a family.
…and then there is the possibility of grand children
I am considering a career move that I walked away from when my recent graduate was entering high school. Step forward or backward? Not sure.
Not a bit, I am still a mom and a grandma to various aged individuals and feel the same after D’s graduation last weekend from the Med. School. Was joyfull occasion, D. had 8 guests attending, it was nice to have them all at one table at pre-graduation dinner. So, I became a mother of MD (yayayya!!!). She got her first resident badge, oficially stating Resident, not a Medical Student and having MD after her name. Proud and happy beoynd belief. And I am also a mother of the Graphic Desighner (her older bro.). Somehow both of these sound more impressive and pleasing to my heart and my ears that the “student”, not a bit of sadness…
Oh OP, yes, I am there already and my youngest doesn’t graduate for another 7 months. Everything this summer is tinged with “next year, he could be anywhere, working” and I know that’s good, but it still makes me grieve for that part of our life that is over. He and two cousins are the last of the grandchildren to launch, and also represent the end of the holidays together, etc at my parents since thankfully they are employed, but scattered everywhere. We’ve been happy to see the pile of cousins doing trips together, flying to visit, but it is rather like being fired from the best job ever. I am going to be happysad right along with you.
I didn’t have those feelings when S graduated from college. I was happy for him and excited about his next phase, which he was embarking on in less than two weeks. And a year later, there was grad school. And a year after that, his first real job in his chosen field.
They were overwhelming when he LEFT for college. :((
Since he is an only child, every milestone was both the first and last. I really do wish that I had more children, though.
For me, it was the other way around. As college students, my kids seemed like part-time residents of our household. I didn’t feel that they were gone or that I no longer had any role to play as a parent. As college graduates, they’re gone forever. On the rare occasions when they come back, they’re guests. And my parenting days are over.
One of my kids lives on the opposite coast, and because of his working hours and mine, it is impossible for us to talk on the phone on weekdays. At all times during the 24-hour cycle, at least one of us is either working or sleeping. It’s a very strange feeling to know that you can’t talk to your kid for days on end.