Sending Them Off to School

The clothes, hair and backpack may change, but the mixed bag of emotion stays the same.

Sending your child off to kindergarten is weirdly similar to sending your child off to college.

Both scenarios leave you a living contradiction: You’re happy for them and yet you’re crying crocodile tears. You know they’ll survive yet you’re a bundle of nerves and fears.

My oldest son will go off to college for the fourth time in a couple of weeks. He’ll start his senior year of college, this time moving into a house with five friends. I can remember like it was yesterday the day he went off to kindergarten. His hair slicked back and the blue and white striped shirt (that I painstakingly ironed) tucked into khakis, his Batman backpack (that he painstakingly chose off the rack) strapped to his back. I threatened to follow the school bus in my car and was sure that some evil would befall him between the time he left the protective eye of the bus driver and the time he entered the front door of the school 10 yards away.

A blink of an eye, and I’m now worried about the bacteria that will fester in the kitchen sink of that college bachelor pad.

In between there have been lots of first days of school, with hair not so slicked back, my fears jumping from “Who are you going to eat lunch with?” to “How are you going to deal with having her for a teacher?” to “How will you get from C Wing to the science lab in a five-minute class change?”

If you’re sending your “baby” off to college, read what the experts have to say about dealing with empty nest syndrome.

And if you're on the other end of the spectrum and you're sending your "baby" off to kindergarten or first grade, check out how to prepare them for a new school year.