How to be an empty-nester without losing your mind

This weekend, thousands of teenagers will be shuttled to their new universities. Exciting for them, but devastating for those left behind, says parenting expert Lorraine Candy

- Lorraine Candy

There are 16 pairs of shoes and trainers strewn across our hallway right now. The coat cupboard is so full that everyone just throws their giant puffa jackets on top of the mountainous pile. But by Friday, our hall will be clear, the coats gone. The house will feel as if someone has pressed the mute button, and a new stage of family life begins. We're dropping my 18-year-old son off for freshers' week in halls 100 miles away, while my 21-year-old will have returned to her Scottish university and my 23-year-old moves into her first flat to start her first job.

Just me, my husband, and our 14-year-old daughter will remain at home.

Although I can see this emotional rite of passage bowling towards me at speed, I know that the feelings of it will ambush me unexpectedly, as they have done before. We're at the end of the parenting path, standing in front of the gateway to an empty nest. Four down, one to go. I look at my 14-year-old and I can see she knows she's now at risk of drowning in our attention.

With the departure of each sibling, the shape of her childhood dramatically changed, and the impending loss of her brother will undoubtedly catapult her into the spotlight of our last-man-standing neediness. I didn't think about any of this when I had her at 43; we never played it forward, we were just so grateful to be able to have, and afford, a bigger family that we stayed firmly in the present.

You never see this coming when you're in the hurly burly of family life. The realisation that parenting is one long goodbye unfathomably comes as a shock. One moment you are all braided around each other, the next it's just two of you wondering what the benefits of a National Trust membership are and googling “how much exercise do spaniels need?”