How to deal with your kid leaving • Buttondown

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Mike Monteiro’s Good News

May 14, 2026

How to deal with your kid leaving

My child is in high school and I’ve been in deep mourning for the last two years that they’ll (likely) be leaving me first for college, and then for...life!

A really fucked up Daffy Duck I painted yesterday<br>This week’s question comes to us anonymously:

My child is in high school and I’ve been in deep mourning for the last two years that they’ll (likely) be leaving me first for college, and then for...life! What advice do you have for connecting during these years, and then staying in touch without being overbearing once they really do move into adulthood?

First off—congratulations. Congratulations on getting your kid to the launch pad. Because it is hard, which I am sure I do not need to tell you. But parent to parent? We should absolutely acknowledge the success of raising a child (very hard), who then becomes a tween (even harder), who then becomes a teen (nigh impossible), who then becomes a young adult (exhausting), who then becomes a fully fledged adult (fucking finally). Throw yourself a party, because you absolutely fucking deserve it.

Secondly—get ready for the saddest day of your life.

When my daughter moved into her own place I was incredibly excited. Like a lot of kids her age, she would’ve probably left sooner but we got hit with a global pandemic which rightfully fucked us all up, and in many ways is still fucking us up because rather than dealing with it, we (and I mean the big social “we”) just decided to pretend it didn’t happen/isn’t still happening, and that it had no affect on us. Which it very much did. And it absolutely had an effect on our kids, who I’m only singling out today because they’re the topic on the table. Anyway, by the time she moved out I was super excited and ready for it to happen. I knew this was an important step to take in becoming an adult. You cannot become an adult living in your childhood bedroom, and you cannot become an adult living under your parents’ roof. At best, you become an adult-sized dependent. So seeing that she’d built up the confidence to venture out on her own filled me with pride. Then she packed up her stuff, drove off, and I went into a fetal position in her empty bedroom for an hour, crying like I hadn’t cried in a good long time.

When your kid leaves it is the happiest day of your life and also the saddest day of your life. And a lot of other feelings in between. All of them are real, and all of them need to be honored. The idea of an adult-sized human asking you “what’s for dinner” as you walk through the door, which you found incredibly irritating just a week ago, becomes something you start missing. A lack. An absence. A reminder that your kid is out there, somewhere else. Are they even eating?! (They are. They’re eating the trash you wish you could still eat.)

I left my parent’s house the day I turned eighteen. Right into my college dorm. My parents were on vacation at the time, a family vacation that I’d strategically opted out of. I went to college in Philadelphia, where I grew up. My parents assumed I’d be commuting to classes from home. But it was never actually discussed because I’d learned that bringing up something that I cared about only increased the chances that it could get taken away. Also, they didn’t ask. At the time I didn’t think anything of the fact that they didn’t ask, by the way. It’s only writing it down now, so many years after the fact, that I’m thinking, “boy that was weird.”

So I did all my college applications on my own, negotiated all my student loans on my own, and handled all the logistics on my own. (This is a superpower that all ECI’s (Eldest Children of Immigrants) possess. Do not fuck with us. We can do paperwork, we can forge the signature of every adult in a three mile radius, and we are not afraid of negotiating with utility companies.) By the time my parents returned from their vacation I was safely tucked away in a college dorm, learning how to hack a cigarette machine.

The first time my parents visited me in my dorm room, my mother sat on the edge of my bed and cried, asking what she had done wrong and why I had abandoned her. She did this at a volume that the entire floor could hear, as was her intent. After all, this performance wasn’t for my benefit. When my brother ended up in prison for dealing she let me know that would’ve never happened if I hadn’t run away to college, abandoning my entire family, by which she meant her.

I mention these events only to let you know that I have a pretty good grasp on what “overbearing” might be.

I fear phone calls from my mother because they always start with an admonishment. A statement on how I’ve failed her. A statement of how I don’t call enough. How I haven’t centered my life around her, and her loneliness. And while I do try to find a reservoir of empathy for her, it’s...