William is back at college now, and we are down to one child in the house, and I will tell you I am not altogether cool with these developments. I am experiencing a time of making non-equivalent comparisons: that is, I think to myself, incorrectly, in an attempt to self-soothe, things like “This is what families with only TWO children feel after the VERY FIRST child goes to college!!” But in a family with two children, when their first child goes, they are down to HALF THEIR CHILDREN, whereas when my first child left I lost only 20% of my children! And, in a similar vein, when a family with two children is down to only one child, they are down to HALF THEIR CHILDREN, whereas I am down to 20% of my children! And you may wonder, why is she all worked up NOW, when she already went from five to four to three and now to one?—but all summer I have had FOUR children at home, which is almost my FULL ALLOTMENT, and now it feels very abrupt to be suddenly down to one. Anyway what I’m saying is that in this frame of mind it’s tempting to make inaccurate/unuseful comparisons, and I am not in the right frame of mind to sort them out, so I beg your indulgence as I spin out a little.
Here is something I noticed RIGHT AWAY. Normally, when Paul and I are going on an errand, let’s say to the grocery store, or maybe we want to see if we can replace the recliner the cats have absolutely CHEWED UP; when, as I say, we are going on an errand, we say to the nearest child, ideally the O.A.T. (Oldest Available Thistle—this is taken from O.A.P., Oldest Available Penderwick), “Child, attend to this announcement: your parents are going on an errand,” and we assume that child will alert/inform the others as needed. If no children are in our vicinity, and/or if all children are sleeping, we will leave a note: “Mother and Father have gone on an errand 9:15 a.m.” or whatever.
But here is what I noticed within an hour of being down to one child: when Paul and I were thinking of going out to replace the recliner, I thought of notifying Henry—but then my overriding inclination was to INCLUDE HENRY. Like, INVITE HIM ON THE BORING ERRAND. I wonder if this happens with Only Children. In the years since the children were old enough to be left on their own, it has felt only LIBERATING to leave them alone as we go on errands without them; now, suddenly, with only one child left, it feels Unsettling. And this happened, as I say, within hours of dropping the other child at college: it was an almost immediate and automatic adjustment—and perhaps not a permanent one. My guess is that my parents, who had two children, did not feel this way after dropping me at college—but perhaps they DID!! Perhaps they felt similarly unsettled about my poor brother, a small sad helpless baby junior in high school, as Henry is!
Similarly, it suddenly feels weird to imagine going on a Date Night, unless Henry has plans of his own for that evening. I’m not saying it SHOULD seem weird, and please remember I am literally less than 12 hours into this new frame of mind so this is not where I’m planning to STAY—but it feels to me like there is a WORLD of difference between the scenario where Paul and I leave three or four or five kids to eat pizza and watch a movie while we go out alone for dinner, and this new scenario where we leave Henry alone while we go out for a special dinner. If you see what I mean.
Even GOING TO BED feels different, or it does on this the first night of it! Normally when Paul and I head for bed, we have been leaving THREE TO FOUR CHILDREN still up! We have locked up, but we have WORRIED NOT about the lights, or about the overall emotional stability/support of the household! No, we go to bed before 10:00, and they stay up later, and we don’t any of us fret ourselves! But now: now! The two of us go to bed, leaving, what, Henry alone? in the house? to figure out the rest of the evening?? the lights?? ALL OF IT??
I have two children, one of whom spends most of his summers at camp. I am also an only child. From my perspective as an only child (teenager edition) I was happy to have the house to myself when my parents were asleep/out. However, I was also lonely when I wasn’t hanging out with friends. So you may find Henry hangs out with friends more than your other children. Remember it will be a huge adjustment for him, too. Also (in my parenting experience) since there are no siblings with activities around, you will (theoretically) have more time for Henry-centric activities, whether that means driving him to work or after school stuff, or doing fun things. You will naturally eat more of the things Henry likes for dinner. My kids would say that they have to do ALLLL the chores when their sibling isn’t home, but you will need to judge the fairness of that in your own family :)
I was/am an only child, and I was frequently invited on boring errands with my parents as a kid/teen—although I’m sure it will not surprise you to hear that I usually chose to stay home once I was old enough for that. I was also usually invited along to restaurants and other such activities, but whether or not I chose to go depended heavily on the restaurant/activity in question. When I got to my mid-to-late teens I typically stayed up later than my parents, but I usually retreated to my bedroom before they went to bed. On the rare occasions when I was downstairs later than they were, they’d say something like, “Don’t forget to turn off the lights when you go to bed” or whatever, and it was never an issue.
This was an interesting post to read, because I never considered these things to be unusual—but I guess they would be in a larger family!
I have wondered about that, too, how it feels in different family configurations. I know a family with three kids, all in the same grade (twins + stepsister) and I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the parents to go from three to zero all at once.
As the youngest of 3 (which is not 5 but also not 1) I HATED the first several months when I was the only one left at home. All of a sudden I felt like there were 4 eyeballs on me all the time. I had gotten used to a level of independence that was then gone – not because rules changed but because they noticed more. I felt like what you seem to be describing – my parents didn’t know what to do with me (my solution was to be gone at work/sports/friends as much as possible). It did even out but it was weird.
I have three kids and my youngest has said the same – he hated being an “only child” when his two older siblings were away for a week this summer. It was too much attention on him. Like he couldn’t get away with sneaking onto the XBox as often.
Awww. It’s a big adjustment! And maybe it’s made slightly bigger by the fact that you went from 3 to 1, instead of 2 to 1, and the sudden absence of two people is felt more.
In my own experience, my younger daughter started spending more time out of the house with friends after the older one left for college, so my husband and I had more date nights without the guilt of leaving her behind. Her boyfriend came over fairly often too, so that helped the house feel less empty. But as soon as #1 moved out, we stopped having family dinners at the table. It felt too sad and weird.
I love the Penderwicks reference! How’s Henry liking being the one at home? Take good care.
I have long been interested in couples who have Date Nights (my spouse and I occasionally went out sans kids, but it wasn’t a regular thing), and now that we have 0 children at home, I am pondering it a lot. I think when we went down to one kid, said kid had stuff he wanted to do with his friends, so couple stuff happened when he was going to be out anyway. I know he would have declined any opportunity to come with us on boring errands. He didn’t necessarily want to come on errands that benefited him.
My spouse clearly thought that when we had zero kids at home, life would return to the way things were in our lovey-dovey pre-kid days, whereas I was looking forward to being free from most adult responsibilities, in the manner of my single days. (In case you couldn’t tell, I had all the mental load of parenthood and home ownership, and I want a break now.)
We have just the one. Once he was old enough to stay at home on his own, he opted to do so often. Once he had a drivers license, he volunteered to do errands in exchange for having use of the car. We seldom went on date nights anyway, but when we did, it was generally on evenings he had plans, too.
Generally, he was up in his room before we went to bed, so I don’t remember ever having the shut the house down discussion.
I remember when my brother left, it felt like all my parents attention turned to me, and it felt oppressive even though it wasn’t negative attention, it was just so much more than it had been. It’s so interesting to think about it from their perspective now that you write about it! I had never even thought about their motivations for taking such an seemingly new interest in me and my comings and goings.
My oldest just left to college, leaving just the 13 yr old sister at home. She’s already hate it – for exactly the way you describe. It’s not negative attention, it is just that it’s 100% of our attention. I need to remember to give her space. She’s used to just kind of being in the background (she’s the quiet one).
As an only child I can say that in my experience I certainly did get invited to go to a lot of generally boring errands and events probably because in a family of only 3 it felt weird for my parents to not include me. When I was young this was fun. When I got to be a teenager I didn’t want to be included in anything they were doing and it became substantially less fun…
Now as the parent of two children, one of whom is in college and the other in HS, I completely hear what you’re saying about leaving one home alone or up late. Oldest just went back to school after being home all summer and I didn’t give a single thought to the kids being home alone while we went on a date night or ran errands or whatever, now I feel weird again about leaving Youngest home alone. Youngest is perfectly capable (and would probably prefer) being home alone rather than say going to Costco and I know this, but I still feel a twinge. For example, tomorrow is back to school night so H and I will be going but a friend is bringing Youngest home from sports practice. Youngest will be alone for all of two hours and have to make their own dinner all of which is completely FINE but I’m still feeling like I’m abandoning them. MAN parenting is a trip sometimes.
I have an only (15) and we always invite him on errands and I had no idea you parents of multiples didn’t do that!
I’d say it’s not that we don’t ever invite them on errands, and in fact I often brought kids along, and sometimes they will ask to come along. But, like, I can’t say “Who wants to come to the grocery store?” if there are four kids at home and I don’t want all four coming with me / I have the smaller car so there isn’t room for them all; there is some forethought that needs to go into the invite, because they PROBABLY won’t all say yes but they COULD. Also, I had so many years when I HAD to bring five or four or three kids with me WHEREVER I went, that when I DIDN’T have to anymore, I did sort of…appreciate not having to.
It must be strange for Henry too, to go from being the youngest of 5 to being the only kid at home. I’m the oldest in my family, so I didn’t experience that.
Are you going to talk about England more? I’d be interested to know the reason for the trip and who planned the daily schedule for the larger group.
As an only child with an only child, in my experience the only child does get drug along on boring errands. In our house, the OC goes along so the spouse can miss out on the boring experience. I think being my sidekick on mundane errands has made her much more appreciative of all the not-so-noticeable tasks that it takes to make a household run. Now that she is old enough to be left home alone, she loves to do so, leaving the boring task to her parents while she revels in the quiet of a house to herself for a couple hours.
It is interesting to hear about your experience with kids going off to college as a parent of 5 kids. We have an only child and just dropped him off at college (17 hours away!) and the change from 1 to 0 is heartbreaking in some ways and no big deal in other ways.
I am also an oldest child who did not think about this in the context of my own parents. However, I think a lot about how this will play out with my own kids. My two elders are in middle school, and the younger one is 2 years old. So there will be quite a few years when she is the only one at home (assuming the older two are off to college when she is 9), and I assume that in some respects she will have the life experience of being an only child.
It’s just always weird, isn’t it? My son left first, and he had been so independent and away so much for baseball it wasn’t nearly the adjustment it was when my daughter left (we are extremely close, and she was around a lot more). Obviously I can’t imagine going from five down to one. My daughter leaving coincided with my husband’s work travel ramping right back up plus some after Covid, so a lot of the time it’s me and the dog staring at each other wondering what the hell happened. Right now I largely relish the quiet and the ability to cook one thing that lasts four days (or not cook anything and read my book until 11 p.m.), because right now there are still study breaks and everyone home at Christmas and in the summer. It’s a welcome middle ground to actual empty nesting.
With my recent hs graduate going off to college, I notice it’s so quiet the house is- even though there are 4 more still at home. Also, she was my driver for – hey can you pick up something while you’re out- and now I have to remind myself I have to do errands like that myself. The remaining kids can sit the youngest, so I guess I could have a date night? But I never really had many dates with husband back in the day. So we’ll stick to the occasional errand together. Nothing says “I love you” like dropping of hazardous waste together.
“Dropping off hazardous waste together” seems like some sort of domestic merit badge, or maybe an item you check off on the way to earning a Clean Out Garage badge.
Thanks for this update, Swistle, I was really wondering how Henry was doing, becoming the only one at home. I also have only one at home but as you pointed out, it’s quite different as I have two children. Also the older one is very close and is able to pop home easily for a visit. My kids are very very close so it’s an adjustment for sure. It helps that my younger son is working a full time job that is 8-4:30 daily, so he’s busy.
This is so interesting to me because I’m the oldest of 3, and we had fairly big age gaps (4 years between each sibling) so I’ve never been the one left behind! Although there are definitely pros and cons to life as an eldest kid as any firstborn would probably recognise – fighting for privileges/freedoms that come so easily to your siblings later on, having a lot of responsibility put on you etc etc, being the ‘practice’ kid to do everything, etc.
Anyway! Mine are 7 and 4 so we’re a way off, but now I’m trying to imagine how it will feel.
My sisters are 4 years older (twins) and would fight all the time. My mom and one of the sisters also clashed quite a bit. We weren’t very close, so when they went off to college, I wasn’t sad in the least. I did a lot of high activities and enjoyed the peace and quiet whenever I was at home. (My mom said that I thrived once they left). I was really good at being an only child.
I also have five kids and I just sent #4 off to his freshman year of college. It is very weird, so so weird. I cannot cook for three people; I am preparing what seems to me like a normal amount of food and we are awash in leftovers.
I have a friend with five kids who sent her #4 off to college a year ago, and the three of them left at home laughingly call themselves The Dregs. Last summer The Dregs went to Paris, just the three of them. I think I need to plan some fun Dregs activities, so I am not just looking mournfully at the stacks of leftovers in my fridge.
My youngest sister (youngest of 7) said this was the weirdest part of her teen-aged years. When everyone moved out and left her home alone with two parents with all this parenting energy and just her… a very compliant and easy teenager. Once they texted her “WHERE ARE YOU?” At 11pm and she texted back “In bed, where I’ve been the last two hours”
She said there’s no longer plausible deniability which was something she enjoyed. Who ate the last cookie? Left the wet towel on the bathroom floor? Didn’t get gas in the car? Clearly they knew it was her. And there was a weird adjustment in cooking, because the three siblings above her were very active/hungry boys and so it was weird for meals to have leftovers and have those leftovers kinda linger.
Hoo boy, I am not looking forward to a year from now when the older of my two will be leaving the younger home alone with us for an extra two years. And I know the latter is not looking forward to it either, since 1) they are pretty close, 2) he tends to let his in-person social life consist of hanging out with her and her friends at school and at our place whereas he interacts with most of his own friends through online games, and 3) she is much more apt to join me for mundane errands and draws my attention more since she’s more extraverted and her tastes and interests align more with mine, so he won’t like being always asked to do things and go places he has no interest in when there’s no sister around to do it.
I picture much of next year going like this:
Me – Do you want to come to home improvement/home décor/grocery/outdoor equipment store?
Son – No thanks.
*me, deflated, moping off all by myself*
I am the youngest of three..my siblings are 6 and 4 1/2 years older than me. However, I wasn’t ever the only one still at home. My brother, sister and I all moved out at around the same time, and I think my parents went quickly into empty nesters and enjoying it. I got married (fairly young) and moved 2,000 miles away so that might have a difficult adjustment for them (my siblings stayed in the area). I asked my sister if our parents had a hard time adjusting but she didn’t think so. Maybe they were just relieved that we were on our own and doing fine.
I have one child, who is also a junior in high school. The only time he is invited on errands is when it directly involves him, such as school supplies or furniture for his room. However, we are a family of solo errand runners as a rule, so it is not unusual for one of us to go shopping and leave the others at home. Date nights or evenings going out with other adults are very common for us, and I actually like it when he is just hanging at home when we are gone because he can watch the dog! What has been weird for us is how busy and independent he has become, especially since he has a car, and how infrequently he is around or has dinner with us during the week. I knew that we would be empty nesters in 2 years, but it seems like we are getting an extended trial period before it actually happens.
You raise a good point. I have never thought about whether our youngest will want to be included with our errands and things more when she is the only one here and all the rest our in college. I do struggle with the adjustment after the kids leave for college – every year. It’s so hard. I love having everyone home. Well, I don’t love the grocery bills, but I love the noise and conversation and the joking around. *sigh* We will see Tank at his college for parent weekend next weekend. Then we are hosting a tailgate at Mini’s college the following weekend. Those events are always so fun. I have two in high school and our 2nd oldest is out of college and living here for the year in order to save money before he moves out next year-ish. He commutes to the city. It does help that he is here for the year. He is my rock and he can talk me down when life gets stressful or I have a lot on my plate.
Good luck with the adjustment.
You have EVERY RIGHT to feel weird and to grieve these changes.
I have three kids, and the oldest is 23 and studying part-time, working part-time largely from home, and still living with us. I am in no hurry to get rid of him anyway, and the cost of living is ridiculous so it wouldn’t exactly be easy for him to go even if he were working full-time. My middle is 18 and about to finish school. She has autism and wants to find a part-time job in a couple months, which she’s very anxious about but can be done with help. My youngest is 13. In Australia, you CAN move temporarily to the university you’re studying at, but it’s very expensive. Most people in my experience just go somewhere reasonably close by, if they live somewhere closeish to a university (though I note that it’s very easy for a public transport trip to be 2+ hours in Sydney).
Tl;dr I don’t have to go through that, but I’ve gone through some adjustments already with the kids and am dreading future adjustments, such as when they mOVE OUT (which I thoroughly support because independence is important and I want them to thrive, but also HOW DARE THEY).
As you know, it takes time to adjust, and that’s both incredibly banal and very true and annoying and comforting and frustrating (and I shouldn’t’ve used the word ‘both’).
I like this quote: “The wiring together of brain cells makes the new behavior feel routine and easier over time. It requires about 10,000 repetitions — translating to a minimum of three months of practice — to develop a new neural pathway and master a new pattern of behavior. This timeframe can fluctuate, as each brain is unique.”
Three months seems far too long and also ridiculously quick. And I recognise it’s different for your situation anyway, when you’ve got kids who go and come back, go and come back. Anyway.
Tl;dr x 2 – I feel for you, good luck!
Ahhh, it’s me, I’m one of the ones who has lost HALF HER CHILDREN from her house!
Oldest went to college last month and he is geographically nearby (14 miles, but takes 40 minutes to drive), but not inclined AT ALL to return home. We bribed him on Sunday with dinner at his favorite taco place. I also guilted him into coming buy one evening when I saw on FindMy that he was in our town 2 weeks ago (I had been looking to see if his brother was on the way home from fitness training and was surprised to see College Student 2 miles away). He has rewarded me for feeding him dinner at 9:30p.m. on a weeknight at our house by BLOCKING HIS LOCATION ON FINDMY.
Ugh, I hate it.
He is absolutely loving college life and we are very happy for him, but it is Noticeably Different in our house and my husband & I are basically empty nesters who feed a teenager because our HS junior is gone a lot, sleeping, or on his phone/playing xbox.
Imagining this situation nudges me slightly more toward getting a dog.