As the great uni getaway begins, here’s how to be an empty-nester without losing your mind

There are 16 pairs of shoes and trainers strewn across our hallway right now. The coat cupboard is so full that everyone just throws their giant puffa jackets on top of the mountainous pile. But by Friday, our hall will be clear, the coats gone. The house will feel as if someone has pressed the mute button and a new stage of family life begins. We’re dropping my 18-year-old son off for freshers’ week in halls 100 miles away, while my 21-year-old will have returned to her Scottish university and my 23-year-old moves into her first flat to start her first job.

Just me, my husband, and our 14-year-old daughter will remain at home.

Although I can see this emotional rite of passage bowling towards me at speed, I know that the feelings of it will ambush me unexpectedly, as they have done before. We’re at the end of the parenting path, standing in front of the gateway to an empty nest. Four down, one to go. I look at my 14-year-old and I can see she knows she’s now at risk of drowning in our attention.

With the departure of each sibling, the shape of her childhood dramatically changed, and the impending loss of her brother will undoubtedly catapult her into the spotlight of our last-man-standing neediness. I didn’t think about any of this when I had her at 43; we never played it forward, we were just so grateful to be able to have, and afford, a bigger family that we stayed firmly in the present.

You never see this coming when you’re in the hurly burly of family life. The realisation that parenting is one long goodbye unfathomably comes as a shock. One moment you are all braided around each other, the next it’s just two of you wondering what the benefits of a National Trust membership are and googling “how much exercise do spaniels need?”

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You contemplate downsizing each time you stand tearfully in an empty bedroom, and statistics on the rise in divorce for the over-65s make you wonder if extra time with your other half will bring you closer or highlight your differences and put you at risk of becoming “silver splitters”.

It’s a time of recalibration as beloved rituals and routines change. No one wants to watch Bake Off any more, only a couple of cups are needed for morning tea, the weekly shop is a quick, boring affair, the washing machine is empty, and your dog is permanently whizzing round the house looking for missing loved ones.

They should teach you about PENS (pre-empty nest syndrome) in NCT classes because this family rupture caused by waiting in the parental departure lounge is surprisingly shocking.

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But I have also learnt some things along the way which may help you ahead of your first uni or college drop-off this year, and I asked psychologist Dr Tara Porter, author of Good Enough: A Framework for Modern Parents, for advice.

For the siblings left behind, it’s about making space for them to chat about what they’re feeling (if they want to – some don’t). Don’t fill gaps with new activities for you to do together. Do use the gaps for talking, connecting. Never assume you know how they are processing the departures (sibling relationships are often so private you have no idea what’s going on between each of them), stay curious and spark chats on walks, in the car or pottering in the kitchen, never face to face, and keep it informal.

Encourage them gently to discuss their future because they may have been destabilised by the change at home and a sense of their future may help ground them and feel more secure in this new unit. Also, find out how they want to stay in touch with siblings. We found sending pictures, not texts, got a better response than asking the teens who’d left what they were up to or demanding they stay in touch regularly (they won’t). And back off if just one child is left behind, avoiding the temptation to cling or ramp up your involvement; in my experience, that pushes away a teen striving for independence. Some may welcome all your extra loving, but remember, they’re on their way out the door too, so best let them guide you on how much they want and need you right now.

There is much science to show teenage boys are more fragile than girls when it comes to upheavals at home, so keep checking in with them with curious but gentle questions about how they’re doing. Perhaps observe them more closely, as teen boys are three times more likely to take their lives than teen girls and less likely to talk about or recognise the importance of dips in their mental health.

There’s much to be said for empty nesters taking on extra hobbies, volunteering and hurling themselves into all the new longevity diets and fitness routines, but I’d suggest it is more about answering the question: what is the point of me at this transitional stage of life? Take time to feel all the feelings of living loss, which is the very real grief of children leaving home. This is better for you than the distraction of an enormous new project. It is a time of testing and learning, so don’t settle on a new routine until you’ve tried out a few. Weekends are dramatically different with each departure, so try out a few new ways of spending time with each other.

Do not get that new/extra dog, don’t jack in your career and start training for a new one until you have spent a few months adjusting. Have a “backburner” list for sure, write down all the things you’d love to try now you have more time, but wait a while before ticking things off it.

Finally, take yourself and your co-parent off for a celebration of a job well done. There is no one-size-fits-all way of ensuring your children become good adults, so however you feel you have done, it is time to congratulate yourself on getting this far. Mark the end of your parenting era.

I am off to compose a parental love letter for my son to find when he unpacks his air fryer, then we’ll tuck into a final family dinner with all six of us, where they will repeatedly refuse to have their picture taken together, and I will try as hard as I can not to bring up plans for Christmas.

Lorraine Candy is the author of ‘Mum, What’s Wrong With You: 101 Things Only the Mothers of Teenage Girls Know’