• How you feel dropping your kid at university

How you feel dropping your kid at university

If your children are young, this will seem like a crazy thought. Hey, one day they’ll be off living on their own. But in what seems like the time it takes to drink a coffee and have a pee, the years are standing behind you waving, and your child is ready to leave home. I dropped my son off at university on Sunday and have been asking friends who’ve done the same what they felt or thought:

How it feels when they go

Photo by Not Jane Doewhat they felt. Here’s what we came up with:

  • You will either feel tearful, a bit gritty or angry or a combination of all of them
  • Even if you’re happy, you’ll still feel a bit strange (as we were leaving the university, one mother now alone in her car hissed at us about lane discipline)
  • “Very mixed feelings: pride, happiness, sadness and concern”
  • “When we got home I couldn’t resist phoning to check all was OK – but no answer. A few panicky thoughts about my lonely abandoned son. Then my realistic side persuaded me he would be fine”
  • Going through your head: Will my kid eat properly at all during the three years? “Mine went to the shop on campus while I grappled with his quilt in a room the size of an elf’s shoebox. He came back with a pot noodle and a box of jaffa cakes”
  • Also going through your head: “That bloody Beatles song about ‘She’s leaving home, bye bye'”
  • “There’s no resolution to my catastrophising. Before, I could worry about him walking the mean streets of South London, but then he’d get home OK. Now I can only imagine where he is and my head’s running riot”
  • If you analysed the cat’s fur you’d find tears
  • Proud and happy
  • Broke
  • Yah! We can have noisy nooky again!
  • If you thought leaving them at nursery was hard …

How did or would you feel? How do you think you’ll cope? Is it a walk in the park or a nightmare in the dark for you? For me, it just feels horribly quiet.

 

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