Luke felt overwhelmed with both pride and grief after dropping his son off at university for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It feels like a brutal adjustment,” he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“After 18 years of seeing him every day and taking care of him, I miss him so much and I don’t really know what to do with myself.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like other parents we have spoken to, Luke (not his real name) and his wife have felt compelled to regularly check a Facebook group for parents and carers with children living in the same halls of residence, as well as a university-wide version with more than 2,000 members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first, being in these groups felt helpful for practical information, particularly in the weeks before his son headed to university, Luke says. But now they’re feeding his anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“People will post things like: ‘Is it normal to spend so much time in your room?’; ‘I’m worried my daughter is struggling to make friends’; ‘My child isn’t replying to messages – how often are people hearing from theirs?'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have also been questions about Amazon parcel logistics, requests to borrow cereal bowls and what tog duvet other people’s children were given.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Luke felt overwhelmed with both pride and grief after dropping his son off at university for the first time. “It feels like a brutal adjustment,” he says. “After 18 years of seeing him every day and taking care of him, I miss him so much and I don’t really know what to do with myself.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24822,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24820\/revisions\/24822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}