Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with emptynest

Moving on, moving out?

b33j — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:09:59 -0800

Parents want to move across the country, adolescent children want to stay. What to do? My kids are growing up. My daughter(14) is beginning grade 10 tomorrow and my son (16) is starting his last year of school. He intends to probably go to uni, but hasn’t definitely made a decision. Anything my daughter plans is subject to change. We have no car. We are experiencing low income, mostly due to the fact that I quit my job to study full time. I will hopefully be finished that in 2 years (a year before my daughter finishes high school) so our income should nearly double about then.

My husband and I both left home relatively early by today’s standards. He entered the army age 15, I left home at 17. Neither of us went back. We had our children quite young (I’m now 39, he’s 40). We both were moved around a lot as kids and it didn’t work out too well for us, so we made sure to stay put for these guys (as much as we could). So we’ve been in the general vicinity of the state capital for the last 13 years with 3 moves, the last 5 years ago when we bought this place. As you can imagine, in the last 13 years (particularly when we had a car) we’ve seen everything within a 6 hour driving radius of this place).

Did I mention that we moved a lot as kids? I think it got into our blood. We moved nearly every single year of our lives until we became parents. We’re desperate to move again, and our kids don’t want to, and I see their point of view. In fact, I’ve promised to stay put until they’ve finished their schooling and we will - so that takes us to the end of 2009. But I really, really want to move then. Its way too hot here (yesterday it was 40C – 105F). I want to experience new horizons, new people, new places.

Thing is, I can see, when they’ve finished high school, they’re not going to be ready to live away from home. They don’t want to. None of their friends will either. And they don’t want to move cross country. Their friends are here, they have access to a number of good tertiary institutions and it is typical here to live at home and commute to uni. On the other hand, my husband and I would like to get jobs on the opposite side of the country. We’ve considered moving out, and letting them have the house, but for the first time, last night, I got the impression from them that they don’t feel confident with taking care of it. Getting any other information out of them on this topic is like getting blood out of a stone. Hey, they’re teenagers, lovely people, with great ideas, but sometimes they don’t know what they don’t know, and sometimes they don’t know how to say it.

I’ve had a look at the parenting tag questions but none fit. Other suggestions welcome.

What’s a fair way to give both generations in this family what they need/want? What am I missing here?

This nest, it is empty?

piro — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 09:59:49 -0800

My parents just dropped off my younger brother (and their youngest child) at college. What can my elder brother and I do for them to mark the occasion, short of ordering a gross of tissues for delivery to their Orlando-area home?

Dealing with an empty nest

lumiere — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 13:09:08 -0800

Empty Nest: My mother is having a very hard time adjusting to my recent overseas move. How can I help her? I've recently moved overseas for postgraduate study and my mother is having a very hard time adjusting. Every time that I talk to her on the phone, she talks about how she is feeling down and really missing me. My brother and I have been out of the house for four years now--attending university in a city five hours to the north--and she was very happy with this arrangement and my parents would visit every couple of months or so. There was certainly a period of adjustment with our first moves out but she got over it quite quickly (and turned my brother's bedroom into another office). This time--nearly a year after I moved--it's as though she's waving goodbye at the airport.

Since I'm slogging away as a postgrad, I'm not able to move back (and I'm not sure that this would be the best idea). She understands this and--as she'd really like to see me with an honest-to-goodness job--she is encouraging and supportive. She's recently seen a doctor and started taking antidepressants and they seem to have helped a bit, but she's still struggling. She is physically active, eats well, is generally quite healthy and, as far as I know, her marriage is good.

What can I do for my mother and what can she do for herself to get over this severe case of empty nest syndrome? Any and all help is much appreciated.