<p>Daughter left only yesterday and I feel such a void! We are very close. We have been randomly texting and have talked once on the phone today. I don't want to pester her- I understand she is at the start of something fantastic.I am pretty sure she is fine, making friends, etc., but I just miss her so much! I teach and won't be back in school for a week or so. Does it get any better?
PS We are friends on FB but never post on each other's wall. She also hasn't posted anything new.</p>
<p>Yes it get’s better. </p>
<p>Don’t post on her wall. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/987860-parents-how-would-you-feel-if-your-kid-rejected-your-friend-request.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/987860-parents-how-would-you-feel-if-your-kid-rejected-your-friend-request.html</a></p>
<p>Come here or visit other forums. What are your interests?</p>
<p>I like chowhound, medscape, andagain, and gardenweb. Oh, and then there are also your friends in real life! (smile).</p>
<p>Try to get really busy. My daughter went off to college (freshman year) the first weekend in August. I wasn’t able to go with her that weekend, but visited the next one. We text and have Skyped once. We do contact each other with texts periodically each day, most of the time she initiates it. I am handling it by being very busy. I am also a teacher and I went back to school last week. This year I am teaching 8 classes with no planning period and I am the school webmaster. To say the least, I have been extremely busy. I arrive at 6:30 am and usually leave between 4:30 - 5:30 pm and then I do more work for my classes when I get home. Right now my schedule doesn’t give me a whole lot of time to miss her, and we are also very close. One other thing that has helped is that my husband has been working hard to be Mr. Perfect and I am loving it.</p>
<p>my kids won’t friend me on facebook- they even hide their profiles from me- oh well- then I don’t have to worry about them making comments about who I talk to on there.
;)</p>
<p>My daughter and I use facebook to message back and forth. It’s nice to get little snippets of her life and how things are going. She can do this at 3am or whenever which makes it more convenient than phoning. She’ll send the occasional text which is always nice. We both found skype kind of awkward so didn’t really get into that. </p>
<p>I think it’s important to let them set the pace. It’s a good thing if she’s not making a lot of contact right now. Let her settle in and get a feel for things.</p>
<p>My D (only child) was away for 5 weeks this summer. She was homesick at first, but overall had a great time, called very frequently to fill me in…and…I just became miserably depressed! There were other troubling things going on, but I’d have been so much more resilient if she were here.</p>
<p>So–I hear you loud and clear! I’m sure it will be much better when you’re back in school, and you can take up new things…yada yada…still, I have a sense now of just how rough it’s going to be and I’m grateful I have 2 more years before I face it for real. The fact is, we’ve spent years wound up in our kids-- which is just what gives them the strength and ability to go out on their own-- but of course it’s an immense shift. It would be weird if you didn’t feel a void, really, but…well, I’m sending a hug here, because I have great sympathy.</p>
<p>So do I really have to wait for her to initiate contact? I don’t think I can…I told her I would call her later. </p>
<p>Do you think no news really is good news?</p>
<p>My daughter will be a Junior this year. When she left for university as a freshman two years ago, it was very hard…even though her school is within driving distance!
It had just been the two of us since she was 5 years old, and we are very close. I work from home so I did not have the routines and camaderie of other people to distract me. </p>
<p>I did not expect the transition to be as hard as it was. It seemed so sudden D that was 18 years old and independent and flying out of the nest. I wasn’t ready for this. What happened to all those years that just seemed to fly by so quickly like some weird time warp?</p>
<p>What helped me was how proud I was of her, of her accomplishments, of her values, how self assured she was, the person she was becoming…that she turned out to be such a good kid. Things could have been otherwise…under some very difficult circumstances of her growing up. One never knows what challenges life can present, things that may be out of one’s control. The intense feelings of missing her (which was awful), and the feelings of time having passed by so quickly changed after a while into a sort of gratitude that all was well and that she was doing well. Over the last two years we have remained very close. All is well as now she’s going off to do a study abroad. </p>
<p>Sounds as though you are also close to your daughter. This will not change because it’s already established. Just the circumstances of her living away from home have changed. Be proud that you have built the foundation for her to be able to set forth into an exciting new chapter in her life. </p>
<p>It takes getting used to but I promise it WILL get better.</p>
<p>I think no news is good news for sure. And I also think you can call her–but be prepared for “Can’t talk now.” (I do remember the first night of camp, D called me the minute her roommate called home. Burbled on excitedly, and I could hear the roomie doing the same in the background. But I know she wouldn’t have wanted to be the first to call home.)</p>
<p>
Yes. Really try. Sometimes I would send a little text about something, other times an email, but I always had her initiate phone calls. It lets them know you trust them and are letting them grow. She called a lot at first and as she settled in the calls settled into a pattern of a couple of times a week. Or at least once per week. Better than her brothers. For them I just about had to threaten to cut off $$ to get them to call. :)</p>
<p>I feel for you. The powerful connection with daughters also leads initially to such a very intense longing for them when they are away. It does get better. The summer before my Ds freshman year she worked away at a camp, with inconsistent internet and absolutely no cell phone access. It was brutal, but it did prepare us for life apart. She came back ready to go off to college. During that first year, she called intermittently and emailed or texted. We feel free to email her little items of interest, but try to keep the phone calls to a minimum, so as not to intrude. We are lucky that she is in driving distance, though. We left her alone the first part of the year so that she could adjust and feel her independence, but toward the latter end, when she had made it clear that she did tire of the dorm food, we occasionally take her out to a nice dinner. Lucky for me, I have another high-school D to occupy my driving time and parenting energy (in addition to work, home, and other interests, of course). But, I have begun to think about what it will be like when they both have launched, and I am getting tears in my eyes reminding myself that from junior year to college feels both interminable and a blink. I agree with the other poster’s comments about the gratitude about the persons they are becoming… but even with the appreciation for all they are experiencing and learning, when you miss someone, you just really miss them. Hugs!</p>
<p>My daughters and I touch base every day or every other day either by e-mail or phone, but I always let them initiate it.</p>
<p>The way it works is they feel you are being intrusive if you initiate the communication. But God forbid if they need to get in touch with you and you don’t respond. When D1 wants to talk to me, she would try my office land line, my personal cell, my office BB, then my assistant (in that order). It is always a suprise to her that I could be busy.</p>
<p>Yes, it does get better, and sometimes you could even be too busy to talk to them.</p>
<p>Oldfort-- So, so true!</p>
<p>With soph DD what I’ve learned is it’s fits and starts. She has been fully engaged and loving college from day one. She is always super busy between classes, parties and her ECs. When on campus a text every few days is as good as I’m going to get. My time is during breaks when we try to do something together and catch up.</p>
<p>This entire thread breaks my heart. My daughter is only a senior in high school and I already worry about the separation. I certainly wish all a smooth transition but I don’t envy any of you! :)</p>
<p>A student’s perspective:</p>
<p>My mother and I are very, very close. My biggest fear going into college last year (I’ll be a sophomore come September) was leaving my mom. The separation anxiety started months before I even moved out – just thinking about her being so far away (I go to school about 1200 miles from home) got me teary-eyed. I was excited to go off to college and I’m sure she was excited to see me go (and to have her house back, after 20-something years of raising me and my brother), but it was definitely a hard situation for both of us.</p>
<p>Please don’t call her. Even if it’s been seventy-two hours since your last phone call and she’s sent home some melodramatic email about how badly she wants to go home and how much she misses you (um, that might have been me), let her be the one to pick up the phone. If you’re as close as you say you are – and I don’t doubt it – then she misses you plenty, too. Personally, despite my homesickness, I spent the first week or two of college generally happy, meeting new people and feeling out my new surroundings. The hardest times for me were right after hanging up the phone with my mom – that was when it hit me how homesick I was, and how much I missed her. I actually dreaded calling home every week because I was always afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep it together during the good-bye, and I hated to make her worry. The best thing my mom did for me was to not call me every day, despite my melodramatic email tirades and obvious homesickness. If she had called all the time, I would’ve known for sure how much she missed me, and worried about her, and I am so, so glad to not have had to deal with that. It was easier to know that she missed me but have no evidence that she was having a hard time with it, even though I knew she must be. It also let me know that she thought that I could do it, and didn’t need to check in on me all the time. Her belief in me has always been a huge source of support for me, and this was really just another way of her showing it.</p>
<p>As a student, it got easier for me with time, and when my mom and I discussed it over winter break, she said the same thing. The best thing you can do is keep busy, as others have said, and know that your daughter is doing fine. I’m sure she will call soon and will have all kinds of stories to tell you about her classes and the things she and her friends are up to. In the meantime, I agree that short emails or texts are fine – just leave the phone calls up to her if possible. She’ll call when she’s ready, I promise.</p>
<p>^^
You have a very wise mom. 
</p>
<p>OP, read and re-read silversaline’s post; I think this is your answer.</p>
<p>(thought of this too late to add to above)</p>
<p>OP: I found that care packages were a great way to deal with my missing-her moments. No, it’s not too early! Trust me, your D would LOVE getting something in the mail next week. I had so much fun last year thinking about, shopping for, and putting together those packages. You can do something as simple as a few food goodies, or you can toss in small toys (always a huge hit with my D), toiletries, a t-shirt, a comic strip snipped from your newspaper, a gift card to a store in her area. Doing those packages helped me feel more connected to her, in a fun way.</p>
<p>Oldfort… I nearly choked on my morning coffee when you gave the “progression of trying to reach mom” phonecalls. I have the same thing…cell phone–home phone–office phone—back to cell phone. They do expect you to pick up the phone with a cheery hello at any time they call. My kids know my work schedule but I must admit their calls have often made it possible for me to cut short an already too long meeting with a client. Now there are times that I wish they would call just so I could hurry a client along.</p>
<p>It gets much easier as some time passes. The most helpful advice is to stay as busy as possible as each kid leaves for college.</p>