Encouragement For Moms Sending Kids Off To College

Whether your baby is going to Kindergarten for the first time or they’re spreading their wings and going to college, we know it affects you just as much as it does them.

Last August, my oldest child and daughter, Baby headed just over an hour away to college. To say I was a wreck was putting it mildly.

I cried…A LOT!

Throughout her senior year, I would cry over the craziest things:

• her senior pictures
• prom; her one and only school dance
• thinking about her going away

You name it, if it had anything to do with her life in my home coming to an end, I was in tears.

Baby took it in stride because she knows I’m a nut job anyhow. Sometimes I’d just want to hug her. She really tried to be patient.

Then the day came.

The day she moved out of my home into her dorm room.

We got her all set up and started meeting her roommates. The college kept us all busy with move-in day activities. I think it was just one of the ways to keep parents from breaking down sobbing and dragging their kids home to homeschool them for college.

  It finally came time for me to leave. Leave my little girl who was(is) utterly precious to me. Leave her in the city, without me there.

I went home and slept in her bed that night and cried myself to sleep.

Where had the time gone? What had happened to the little girl in pigtails? Who was this new girl in an 18 yr old’s body? How has all this time gone by when it feels like it’s only been a few years?

Well, it’s been a full year since my daughter headed off to school. Unlike most kids, my daughter didn’t come home for the summer. She has a job in the cities and stayed on campus. Sure she made it home for a couple of overnights, but not enough for this mom.

I made it through the first year and so did she. She became more independent and I learned to live without my daughter whom I depended on so much.

Life was different. There was no girl chatter anymore. Our family dynamic had changed. It was very strange.

Sometimes she would call if she needed advice, or her car broke down again, or to tell me she was coming home for the night.

I learned more about what was going on with her from Facebook than I did on the phone. Things like:

• leaving an oven mitt on the stove and almost starting a fire
• having a chain fall off her bike in the middle of a busy intersection where she fell and hurt her ankle
• that she fell in a creek and had her phone on her which she had just bought

Trust me, there are too many “incidents” with this child to name them all.

I’m here to encourage you mom! A mother’s heart is an easily breakable item. These are our babies, no matter what age they are. We love them with every fiber of our beings. They were once part of us.

Sending our children away to college or off to Kindergarten might be the natural progression of life, but it’s not an easy one. These are our precious kids whom we have sheltered and nurtured for however many years making the leap into the great big world.

You will make it and so will they. We will learn to live differently. Our relationships with our kids will change. We will change. It will be good. You’ll see. It won’t be easy and it’s ok to mourn the loss of childhood. But you will need to get past it, for their sake and yours.

It will become a more rich and bonding time for you and your son or daughter. Find as much positive as you can and hold on to it for dear life. God will see you through!