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While many parents want to raise independent children, letting go, especially if your life was defined by being a mother or father is not easy. Two couples share how they have been navigating this phase.

Time flies. One time you are changing your baby’s diaper, the next time you take them to kindergarten and before you know it, you watch them graduate from the university, and they start their career or you walk them down the aisle to start a family. 

Not surprisingly, many parents experience a profound sense of loss and uncertainty when their last—or their only—child leaves the nest.

While the ultimate goal of parenting is to raise healthy independent young adults, this transition is still challenging and sometimes even heartbreaking leaving many parents struggling with empty nest syndrome.

For Chip and Chari Kingsbury, watching their last-born daughter tie the knot in 2016 was both a happy and sad moment.

Though she studied in a boarding school, they would visit her three times a month. When she completed secondary education, she attended a Bible college in the US for one and a half years.

Even though she didn’t live with them, she would at least go home after a while. But now she was gone to start her own family.

But that feeling of watching their daughter leave the nest could not be compared to the time the US couple left their firstborn son in the US.

They had come to Kenya as missionaries in 1980 together with their three children leaving their first born who was working at Pennsylvania School for the blind.

“I remember as I walked to board a plane and looking back only to see him just waving and smiling,” she recalls.

Perhaps this incident was to prepare them that one day, all their children would be independent. So, when the lastborn left, they were prepared.

“We are now able to travel frequently together since it is just the two of us. Before, it was expensive travelling often with our children,” says Chari. 

When much of your life has been defined as a parent, it’s hard to adjust to life without children in the home.

While Chip and Chari had their own lives, with Chari being a counselling psychologist and Chip a faculty member at Daystar University, they made sure to maintain their bond.

For Dr Wale and Taiwo Akinyemi, watching their children grow and leave the house —two are in campus and one got married- was a moment of reflection.

“I was so proud of the kind of manmy son had grown up to be and was happy that his wife was getting a good deal. It brought me to tears watching him say his vows,” says Taiwo.  

Having taught them on matters faith, communicating their feelings and ideas as well as Godly values in a world that was different from how they were brought up, the two are happy to watch their children grounded on their own without peer pressure. 

Letting go

“I felt that if they understood their faith, they could be independent.  I also I didn’t hide anything from them even when things were not good. We sat down and discussed things together.

To date, they come to meet me at any time, we talk about different issues and they advise me about work and stuff.

We had to position ourselves and make them know that we were there for them and with them,” says Dr Wale. 

“Every time I want to worry about them, I ask myself why I’m doing it. Every parent has to learn how to let go when their children leave and believe that whatever they will have taught them they will stand.

I just had to leave them in the hands of God because we cannot parent our children forever and I can’t follow them up the way we follow a baby. I don’t want my children to feel like I am clinging to them,” explains Taiwo. 

For now they are enjoying their lives, getting to discover new things together. They also organise Super Homes, an event in which they bring couples and counsel tham about marriage.

Dr Wale’s advice to couples is to focus more on building a friendship, in as much as they are raising their children, if they want to survive the empty nesters period.

“So many couples are not friends and allow life to let their friendship die. We still do things we did when we were a young couple.

Couples focus so much on their children and find that they have nothing in common. Keep your friendship going even as children are in the house.

While raising them is be a full time engagement, the gaps that your relationship is under threat usually don’t show when you are with them, but when they leave the house. Listen to each other’s show and create an environment that spurs conversation between you two,” he says . 

Also, if you and your partner  focused on your children and not so much on your relationship, he says it is time to get to know your partner again.

This can cause feelings of awkwardness, and may also help you realise that you and your partner were focusing on the children as a way to avoid some issues in your relationship. These issues are harder to avoid when it is just the two of you in the house!

To get to know each other as a couple again, he advises that you talk about some activities or adventures that you may have put on hold.

Also, consider talking with a couple’s therapist to help transition into your new roles in your relationship.