Your youngest son or daughter has just graduated from high school, and soon he or she will trade his or her bedroom in your home for a college residence hall. You're starting to worry about the coming silence in your home and are wondering how you will fill the hours that you previously spent with your son or daughter attending his or her school and sporting events. Take heart -- the empty nest "is often worse in anticipation   than in day-to-day practice", says psychologist Bert Hayslip Jr. Hayslip, who has studied retirement adjustment   and other aging problems, such as aging sleeplessness, for many years, points out that, more often than not, children who leave do not completely cut off contact with their parents. He advises parents to think of _ as a series of life events, instead of a sudden change. He also says an empty nest can cause bigger problems to surface "if a couple hasn't looked after their marriage while raising their children". According to Hayslip, some couples may find they no longer have anything in common once the children are out of the house. Thinking of an empty nest as the loss of children makes the adjustment more difficult. "With the empty-nest syndrome  , parents actually need to deal with the loss of the parenting control over children, not with having really lost their children," Hayslip says. "They just have to find a new way to get along with their children." "Relating to their college-age children in this new way will come easily to parents as the months pass. As with many things, the passage of time heals the pain of loss," Hayslip says. Why do many parents find it hard to adjust to the empty-nest life?
Because they think they have actually lost their children. Because they often disagree with their children on many things. Because their children completely cut off contact with them. Because these parents don't have anything in common.