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# Empty nest leaves a void
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/empty-nest-leaves-a-void/
- Published: 2007-10-30T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T03:44:30.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: Education, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Santa Monican starts groups for parents dealing with loss*

CITYWIDE Louise Green had been through this before.

It was the same routine that the Santa Monican had experienced with her two eldest children, emptying the bedroom, packing the boxes and shipping them off hundreds of miles away.

Still, those heartfelt good-byes hadn’t prepared her for when her youngest child, Santa Monica High School graduate Jazzy, headed off to college in Oregon over the summer.

Gone were the 6 a.m. rides to wrestling practices, the family dinners and the noise of teenagers that filled the household.

“I knew it was time, it was time for her to go,” Green said.“I was excited for the opportunity, but she was the last kid out of the three to go off... it was sadder.”

It’s a feeling of loss and sadness that many parents experience when their children finally leave home, whether it be to go away for college, off to the military or get married. Empty Nest Syndrome is an emotional reaction to changes, often caused by a parent’s realization that their child no longer needs to rely on mom and dad.

A child leaving home can have varying effects on the parents, depending on how closely their lives were tied to child-rearing. The men and women that experience a milder level of the empty nest effect typically are ones that dedicated other aspects of their lives to activities other than parenting, taking up hobbies or perhaps working part-time, according to Richard Gilbert, a professor of developmental psychology at Loyola Marymount University.

The syndrome affects women more than men, but there has been an increase in fathers talking about the feelings of loss they’re experiencing, Gilbert said.

But rather than dwell, parents should embrace.

“See it as a culmination of a job well done instead of some sort of loss,” Gilbert said. “It’s a loss, but a loss that means you’ve done what you needed to do.”

The first few weeks after Jazzy left in August were challenging for Green, especially since her daughter didn’t appear to be adjusting well to college, calling three or four times a day about the difficulties she is facing with cash flow and balancing her schedule.

After a while, as Jazzy started making more friends, the calls started to subside, as did Green’s feelings of sadness.

“I’m planning a wedding for my other daughter so it’s taken my mind off of it,” she said.

Connie Delgadillo is in the same situation that Green was in more than 10 years ago when her first child went off to college. The mother of three children just saw her oldest son head off to the University of California at Merced, the first in his family to seek higher education.

As soon as her son, Sean Crosse, left for college, Delgadillo started worrying, wondering if her son was maintaining a healthy diet, waking up on time, working on his homework — all the things she had control over when he was still living at home.

“It’s scary for me as a mom to give him total independence and responsibility,” Delgadillo said.

Unlike many teenagers, Crosse, who graduated from Samohi in June, isn’t big on cell phones, so the mother and son correspond through e-mail and MySpace mes-

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 30, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/103007.pdf?ref=smdp.com)