Mom Tries to Do Her Skincare Through Tears After Her Firstborn Son Leaves for His College Campus a Day Early, Then Shares What He Told Her About Being So Proud of Her

“Let’s do my skincare and cry,” Lacey says at the start of her TikTok, and the skincare never really happens. Posting as bbylaceyxoxo, she sits in a white T shirt under strings of fairy lights, a puffy pink headband pushing back her hair, wiping her eyes. Her firstborn son, she says, “was supposed to move out tomorrow, and he just left.”

He is going to live on a college campus, she explains, and she admits it is “embarrassing to say he’s only gonna be 2 hours away.” Then she asks her followers straight out: “Am I crazy, or did anybody else cry like this when their kid moved out?”

She explains why this goodbye lands harder than the distance alone would. In her own words, “when I was in my addiction, he lived with his grandma. I fought tooth and nail to get the boys back.” She says she only got them back “like, two years ago.”

Before he left, she says, the two of them talked, and he told her she had given him “a whole new perspective,” that he was “so grateful” for her and for “the relationship we’ve built and everything you’ve done for me,” and that “I’m so proud of you.” She says he was crying too. “Everything that we just talked about was just so intense,” she says. “We went through a lot together. I just want him to be okay.”

Her worries are specific. She thinks he is “a little scared, but, like, excited,” and calls moving out on your own “intimidating.” He has “a small group of friends,” she says, and he is leaving all of them behind except the one he is moving in with. Partway through she stops and says, “Oh my god, his room is empty,” and at one point she presses tissues to her face. Near the end she manages, “I hope this is the best time of his life.” Her caption reads simply: “I’m just a mom okay.”

What Colleges Tell Parents About This Exact Week

Universities write guidance for the parent at home as well as the student on campus. The University of Michigan’s page for parents tells families that “your mixed feelings of joy and sorrow, pride and loss, are normal,” and that “there will be a void in the family and some roles may adjust.” It describes a student’s first six weeks as “a challenging time for young adults making these adjustments all at once,” and asks parents to listen, reassure, and remind their student that those feelings are normal. It also has a line for the parent: “Don’t forget to take care of yourself! This is a period of adjustment for you too.”

Tennessee Tech’s tips for families are blunter. Its advice is to “help find solutions, but don’t solve the problems,” to ask questions “but not too many,” and to visit “but not too often,” noting that unplanned surprise visits usually are not appreciated. It warns that crisis calls home are common and that a parent is a useful sounding board, and it lists the usual worries of first and second year students as academics, homesickness, roommates, money management and peer acceptance.

For a parent whose kid has just left a day early for a campus a couple of hours away, with one friend as a roommate, that guidance turns into a short list:

• Agree on a regular call or text time for the first six weeks, and do not read too much into a missed one. Michigan notes busy students often get wrapped up in campus life.
• Put the first visit on the calendar instead of turning up unannounced, as Tennessee Tech advises.
• Look up the campus counseling center and health service now, so you can name them if a hard call comes, and remind your student they exist.
• When that call comes, listen first and help him think the problem through rather than fixing it from home.
• Ask about roommates and money as well as classes, since those are on Tennessee Tech’s list of first year worries.
• Plan something for yourself in the empty room weeks. Michigan calls this a period of adjustment for parents too.