As Martha Smith of Brewton drove away from the Auburn University campus after helping her youngest daughter settle in as a freshman, she burst into tears. “I was surprised because I wasn’t expecting it,” she said.
Kathie White of Montgomery, however, already knew she dreaded the departure of her youngest. Daughter Cheryl had just joined the military. “It just wasn’t what I had planned for her life,” White said. “It’s not only that they’re gone and having the empty nest,” said White, whose son Chris is 24, “but where they’ve gone to.”
For Pat Pickett of Montgomery the empty nest encompassed more than the absence of her only son, Bob. Although the prospect of her son going to college excited her, his moving out of the family home served to highlight another problem she’d been aware of for some time: the distance in her marriage. “I’m experiencing the empty nest by myself.”
For virtually all parents, the empty nest represents a huge life transition, according to Kathie White’s husband, Jerry, director of Counseling Care, a ministry of First Baptist Church, Montgomery. “When your kids leave home it’s like the role that you had for 20 something years has ended,“ he said.
Jerry White categorized the empty nest as one of the major transitions in a family that affects its health. “You have to change, and a lot of people have a hard time changing.”
Mothers in particular feel vulnerable to an empty nest because their identity often becomes entwined with their children’s, he explained. Not only do their children’s friends see them as “Susie’s mother” or “Matt’s mom,” they begin to identify themselves that way. Many women put aside careers and other activities to raise kids only to realize with something akin to shock that they’ve worked themselves out of a job.
Therefore, preparation for the empty nest should begin in a child’s adolescence, according to Jerry White. “Mom and dad have to start letting go even before [the kids] leave home.” That means gradually letting adolescents make more decisions as well as mistakes and then allowing them to experience consequences without rescuing them.
“We’ve got to give them space to discover who God wants them to be. I believe that’s God’s plan,” Jerry White said. “The adolescent tends to want to rush it. The parent tends to want to slow it down.”
Although most parents interviewed anticipated sending their kids off the college with excitement, most also admitted suffering the symptoms associated with the empty nest. “You go through a time of grieving your losses,” Jerry White said. “You grieve roles of parent-protector and loss of the relationship. You’ll have a relationship, but it will never be the same.”
Pickett said she looked forward to her son’s move to college. “I knew he was experiencing a new part of life he didn’t know about.” But after the excitement of helping him settle in on campus passed, “it suddenly hit me one night that he was never coming home again. His living with us is over.”
Parents coping with an empty nest often experience depression, boredom and irritability, which can direct itself at a spouse. Jerry White recommends counseling when “it becomes a health issue” and it starts to affect relationships, including one with the Lord.
Meanwhile, he recommends that parents confronting an empty nest start coping with it through prayer. “What other areas of ministry does God want us to be involved in now that we have more time? What other ways can God use us?”
As they’re praying, Jerry White recommends that parents go ahead and volunteer. “Do something.”
Mental preparation helped her for the eventual absence of her children, according to Kathie White, although she said the constant realizations that “this is the last time we will do this” made the suffering begin before her oldest even left home. Yet she said she was determined to re-invest and, as her children grew up, first took a part-time job and then a full-time one. “I can’t imagine dealing with the empty nest and not having something else to do.”
While coping with an empty nest, relationships in general become critical for parents. “They have to have other relationships they can depend on,” Jerry White said. One’s relationship with God is supreme, of course. But, if possible, new ones also should be formed, according to Jerry White, who pointed out that while the relationship with God and Adam was perfect, God said it was not good for Adam to be alone. Adam needed human companionship. “We’re all created for relationships with God and others, and we need both.”
Kathie White found her full-time job not only filled her time, but, because she works around young adults, gave her key relationships that helped fill the void her children left. “I involve myself in their lives,“ she said, noting that “it doesn’t matter how many friends you have your own age,” you still need to be around young people.
Parents struggling with their empty nest also need to realize that it’s a season that will pass with promise, Jerry White said. “Know this is temporary. This is a change, but God’s not through with me. I’ve got to discover His plan for my life and, whatever it is, it will be good.”
And parents said they have discovered positives. Kathie White, for example, became an avid scrapbooker. “That has been one of my biggest therapies.“ As she deals with pictures of her children and writes down their histories, she still feels close to them.
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