- It's ok to cry, but try to smile, too.
- Don't micro manage. Get the stuff delivered, give the kid a hug and a kiss and an I love you....and get the hell out of there. The longer you stay, the more awkward it'll get. Unless you have a kid who specifically wants you to stick around and unpack and micromanage how they move in...don't open the boxes. Let your kid to do it their own way. Leave, so they can get outside and go to the welcome week celebrations with the other kids:)
- Now that we've done this three times....what works best for us is dropping the kiddo off with all of her junk, and saying a quick goodbye....with the idea that in two weeks we'll come back on Sunday afternoon and take her to dinner. That way, we get to see her place after she's had a chance to unpack, and we get to hear about all her classes and how things are going. She'll also have a chance to send me a list of things she forgot, and when we get there, we can take her shopping for anything else she needs locally. It's a much nicer time to visit because emotions have settled down on both sides, and there's lots to talk about:)
- Plan some fun stuff. I take a mini vacation with my best friend in September to help with the empty nest blues. Hubby and I make some plans, and make a point to have crazy sex to celebrate having the house to ourselves. During the year, I save up gift cards to restaurants that are given to us as gifts. That first week the kid is gone...is our gift card dinner week. No meals to plan, no dishes to do. Any way I can find to pamper myself that first week, I write myself a free pass. I take long baths in the middle of the day if I want to. With Calgon, dammit.
- If you need a surrogate to mother....consider a puppy or kitten. A young pet's antics breathe life into a house and make you laugh. Unless you're planning to travel a lot, you'll have more time to train and care for a pet. It's something constructive to do with all that mother energy. And kids LOVE to come home for the weekend to see a new puppy...consider it "I'm coming home for the weekend" bait. LOL.
- Volunteer your time to help kids. Again...surrogates take the pressure off of your kid, and put your excess Mom Energy to good use.
- Stay in touch, but don't panic if you lose contact. Phones get lost, batteries die, weather interrupts cell service, study groups run late, schedules get complicated, and things slip busy student's minds. Don't drive 500 miles because your kid doesn't return your text within a couple of hours. Find out who your kid's Residency Adviser is. If you do start to panic? You can call your kid's RA and see if they've seen them, or if they'd mind knocking on the door. If your kid has a really nice RA...they might even be able to do this and call you back without your kid ever knowing that you were having a melt down. If your kid's RA is THIS cool....be sure to give them a little something for Christmas. If your kid checks social media...leave a private message there, or send an email.
- Send snail mail cards and care packages. Anything you order online can be drop shipped right to your kid's college address.
- Send funny pics of yourself and your spouse. Pets. Seasonal pics of flowers, color change, etc. New things in the house. A video of grandma saying hello. Pics of the first snow. My kid is a biologist....I can take pics of toads in the yard and she loves them. Send a video of a baby cousin's fourth grade play. If you send pictures...your kid will send pictures. Pictures help a homesick heart....they also help the hearts of longing parents. Seeing your kid looking happy in her new world...is very comforting.
- Print your kid's school and work schedule so you know when not to be a distraction. If Tuesdays are terribly busy, don't call on a Tuesday.
- It's ok to cry, but try to smile, too.
AGREED!
- Don't micro manage. Get the stuff delivered, give the kid a hug and a kiss and an I love you....and get the hell out of there. The longer you stay, the more awkward it'll get. Unless you have a kid who specifically wants you to stick around and unpack and micromanage how they move in...don't open the boxes. Let your kid to do it their own way. Leave, so they can get outside and go to the welcome week celebrations with the other kids:)
FOR BOTH MY GIRLS, THEY AGREED WITH THEIR ROOMMATES A TIME TO MOVE IN , UNPACK AND GET THE BOXES OUT OF THE WAY. Leaving them to do it themselves would not work. They could not have done it on time. Plus every other room we saw and every one of my kids friends the parents helped. If it’s not the typical thing at their school they might be very awkward if you leave while every other parent is there. I’d only leave if they felt strongly that they wanted me to and it was not putting a burden On roommates family who might feel obliged to help to get the dang boxes out of the way.
- Now that we've done this three times....what works best for us is dropping the kiddo off with all of her junk, and saying a quick goodbye....with the idea that in two weeks we'll come back on Sunday afternoon and take her to dinner. That way, we get to see her place after she's had a chance to unpack, and we get to hear about all her classes and how things are going. She'll also have a chance to send me a list of things she forgot, and when we get there, we can take her shopping for anything else she needs locally. It's a much nicer time to visit because emotions have settled down on both sides, and there's lots to talk about:)
THIS WONT WORK WHen YOU ARE A PLANE RIDE AWAY. EVEN for my closer in kid, ( and still 5 hours away) two weeks in she was going through Rush. Wouldn’t work for many.
- Plan some fun stuff. I take a mini vacation with my best friend in September to help with the empty nest blues. Hubby and I make some plans, and make a point to have crazy sex to celebrate having the house to ourselves. During the year, I save up gift cards to restaurants that are given to us as gifts. That first week the kid is gone...is our gift card dinner week. No meals to plan, no dishes to do. Any way I can find to pamper myself that first week, I write myself a free pass. I take long baths in the middle of the day if I want to. With Calgon, dammit.
GREAT IDEAS!! I actually never plan meals now that we have an empty nest. As I say to my friends "Do you know the best part of having an empty nest? Guess what I’m having for dinner?… I have no idea!!! "
- If you need a surrogate to mother....consider a puppy or kitten. A young pet's antics breathe life into a house and make you laugh. Unless you're planning to travel a lot, you'll have more time to train and care for a pet. It's something constructive to do with all that mother energy. And kids LOVE to come home for the weekend to see a new puppy...consider it "I'm coming home for the weekend" bait. LOL.
LOVE IT!
- Volunteer your time to help kids. Again...surrogates take the pressure off of your kid, and put your excess Mom Energy to good use.
NICE!! Or if you already work, go back to burning the midnight oil. Very invigorating after years of part time for me.
- Stay in touch, but don't panic if you lose contact. Phones get lost, batteries die, weather interrupts cell service, study groups run late, schedules get complicated, and things slip busy student's minds. Don't drive 500 miles because your kid doesn't return your text within a couple of hours. Find out who your kid's Residency Adviser is. If you do start to panic? You can call your kid's RA and see if they've seen them, or if they'd mind knocking on the door. If your kid has a really nice RA...they might even be able to do this and call you back without your kid ever knowing that you were having a melt down. If your kid's RA is THIS cool....be sure to give them a little something for Christmas. If your kid checks social media...leave a private message there, or send an email.
CAN WORK. My kids RA was useless though. Better their friends number. Just the threat that I might text their friend if they didn’t respond meant I always got reasonably quick response.
- Send snail mail cards and care packages. Anything you order online can be drop shipped right to your kid's college address.
YES!!! I sent a fun lil package for Halloween, candy and some cute things from Target dollar section. I decorated the box with Halloween stickers and my daughter got snapchats from a dozen different girls in her sorority house with pics of the box many with #sojealous on them. Lol!
- Send funny pics of yourself and your spouse. Pets. Seasonal pics of flowers, color change, etc. New things in the house. A video of grandma saying hello. Pics of the first snow. My kid is a biologist....I can take pics of toads in the yard and she loves them. Send a video of a baby cousin's fourth grade play. If you send pictures...your kid will send pictures. Pictures help a homesick heart....they also help the hearts of longing parents. Seeing your kid looking happy in her new world...is very comforting.
SNAPCHAT is great for this. It’s the main way I keep up with them.
- Print your kid's school and work schedule so you know when not to be a distraction. If Tuesdays are terribly busy, don't call on a Tuesday.
EXACTLY!
Be careful. Seeing a distraught parent at drop off may intensify the feeling of homesickness for a student predisposed to that.
Some good ideas, but we dropped D off 2,000 miles away, so going back 2 weeks later wasn’t an option, financially or practically. And every other kid had parents helping, some brought their entire families. There was a family dinner in the caf later that day. We’d gone earlier in the week so that we could pick up all the items needed to set up the room. It worked out well this way. There is no “one true way for a drop off”.
I would NEVER EVER call the RA to check on where my D was. The kid has a phone and a computer and is on Twitter, SnapChat, Facebook, plus she calls or texts me every day. If she disappeared from ALL of those, I’d know there was a problem (unlikely). If I see her online somehow, I know all is well.
Agree that mealtimes are spontaneous again, bedtimes no longer an issue, and I can, if wish, work FT again. And I’m volunteering with kids, which I love.
But again, there is no one way to do anything.
Every semester I look up my D’s class schedule (she doesn’t tell me of course, I have to look it up on college website) and chart it on a piece of paper that I keep by the phone. This really helps avoid texting or phoning while she is in class.
Read the book “Letting Go”.
Drop off your kid and don’t open one box? We’ve moved 3 in also at 3 different schools. Never saw one student on his or her own. Parents all helping. It’s actually a pretty big job and I didn’t see one student unhappy a parent was helping. Now, of course, it’s the student’s room and my advice is to ask the student what they’d like help with and where everything should go. For example, I made the beds and dh worked on some of the electronics while our kids all figured out where they wanted their clothes and everything else to go. I did help unpack but only put things where my kids told me they wanted them.
And reach out to an RA? All of my kids would have been furious with me if I had done that. I do agree that getting a roommate’s cell number, just in case, is helpful. The only time I ended up using it was when I was arranging to have a birthday cake delivered as a surprise for D and her friends.
And the advice about leaving quickly and coming back in two weeks? Very personal to the student and, as others have noted, not everyone lives a convenient drive away. We live on the opposite coast and, after dropping D1 off (after her room was set up and parents were all to leave by 5 pm so the kids could start orientation), I traveled for about a week and then came back through D’s college town for one night before heading home. She wasn’t really settled yet, didn’t quite have friends yet and, while very excited to be at college, was a little unsteady. In retrospect, she said it was really hard to see me at that time and that it would have been better if I hadn’t come by (made a never before homesick kid feel homesick). Just throwing out another viewpoint.
Lots of good advice but also a good reminder that kids are all different 
I’ll add one…again, you have to know your kid to know they’d want this but we created personalized calendars with family, friend, pet, etc. photos and had all relevant birthdays noted on their respective dates. My kids all had bulletin boards and, as a parting touch (better if they left the room for a moment so it was even more of a surprise), we put the calendars up in their rooms.
The only advice I thought was “off” was calling it “micromanaging” to do anything other than drop off student with luggage and full boxes. Other than that a lot is great advice or would work for a lot of people. Oh but I wouldn’t call RA.
To clarify, in three years, I have never called the RA…but there are situations when I’d consider it. My sis in law was in a position where her son lost his phone and figured “it would turn up”. She was driving herself crazy with worry because he wasn’t returning her calls while a family member was hospitalized…which was very out of character for him. Her son’s RA was extremely nice and said it was a fairly routine thing for parents to get concerned about an out of contact student and ask for confirmation they hadn’t gone missing. Not saying the RA should be used casually in this capacity…but in rare circumstances when you’re really concerned something might be wrong, it’s nice they’re around!