How Moms Can Plan Ahead for the Empty Nest
The best way to prepare for the empty nest is to start early. Of course, you need to enjoy each stage of your child’s life as it is happening, and this is a first important principle to follow. When you are tempted to worry about the future or long for an earlier time in your child’s life, you’re not letting yourself enjoy the here and now. Work on living in the present and experiencing it to the fullest extent. In addition, you can also follow the suggestions below.
Build Your Other Relationships
In the last year or two that your child is living at home, focus on your other relationships. First, you should look at your relationship with your partner. Often, parents are so focused on raising their children that when their children leave home, they find that they have little in common. Talk to your partner about what kind of life you envision for yourselves in the years ahead and the things you want to do. If you have both developed separate interests, starting making an effort to learn more about one other’s lives.
You should also look to build your relationship with friends. For over a decade, you’ve probably been very strongly focused on family, and it was important that you did so. However, as your child enters their late teens, they will start to become more independent, and you can take this opportunity to rediscover old friendships and build new ones.
Think About Practical Steps
You should also think ahead about practical considerations. Your child probably won’t appreciate it if you turn their room into a home office their first semester away from college, but a few years down the road, you might want to think about selling and moving to a smaller place. You might also want to look at your finances. Deciding to revise your estate plan might be a good idea, particularly once your child is no longer a minor. You could also consider whether you still need your life insurance policy once your child is an adult. If not, you might be able to sell it as part of a life settlement. You can review a guide on selling your policy to find out more.
Find Yourself
It can be daunting to look at how much free time you suddenly have when they leave home. This is a good time to start discovering old ambitions and passions that you may have put aside during raising your children. Think about what you want to do next. You might decide to go back to school or start a business. Maybe it’s time to finally start training for that marathon. As is the case with the other suggestions above, you can start doing this while your child is still living at home. In those later teen years, they will become more independent and want to spend more time with friends. This is an opportunity to start building the life that you will have as your children enter a happy, healthy, independent adulthood.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
