Back to school 2025. You made the choice to send your little pennant to boarding school, convinced “that it was for his good“. But now that you are in front of your empty living room – and that the laughs of yesteryear no longer resonate – you feel the weight of his absence. How to overcome this feeling of sadness that invades you? Amélie Boukhobza, clinic psychologist, shares a few tracks.
A sometimes difficult decision
Despite the multiple advantages that the boarding school offers (discipline, personalized supervision …), educating your child out of your home can be difficult. Daily distance can even be experienced as a real tear, completely disturbing family balance.
“Even if it is a maturely thoughtful decision, we can find ourselves to count on the days. Note that the atmosphere is calmer – too calm, perhaps. And surprise to find the situation too hard”, underlines Amélie Boukhobza.
Indeed, sending your child to boarding school is not just a logistical decision.
“This is a real upheaval because we spend, in one night, a daily life shared at a more empty house. From a permanent noise to a somewhat hostile silence”, she said.
Sometimes this decision occurs because the relationship had become too complicated – even toxic. “Because we couldn’t do it anymore … and because everyday life was only a tension court. And however, that does not take it out of trouble, nor to the love that we have to your child.”
A feeling of abandonment or failure can occur
Finally, we may have prepared for the start of his child (whether he is 12, 14 or 17 years old), the heart tightens anyway. “”This can revive something else: a feeling of abandonment, deaf guilt, a feeling of failure sometimes. Did we do well? Will he keep? Will we hold on? “, underlines the psychologist.
Then comes this paradox: we are proud of him, his maturity, his flight … and at the same time, the desire he returns is intense. “We want him to put his bag at the foot of the bed. That things happen otherwise. That we can start all over again”, continues the practitioner.
But the absence does not rhyme with rupture.
“Love does not take a distance. It takes time to tame this new balance. Recreating a link differently. A message in the evening, a letter, an improvised call. And weekends become something else: reunion. Sometimes, the relationship is calming. Because everyone breathes a little better”, says the expert.
A separation from multiple benefits
Finally, it must be said: this separation can also be beneficial. He will grow, flourish, meet other people, weave strong ties. Live what we could no longer offer him in the house.
“Of course, we have the right to talk about it, to cry, to have a tight heart. It does not mean that we are too fragile, nor that we have missed something. Just that we are human … and that separation, even chosen, remains a tearing”, specifies the specialist.
In front of this deep pain, only one thing to do so: we breathe.
“We transform the absence into a different presence. And we remember that growing also involves letting go a little. But staying there, always. We do not make children for ourselves, but to give birth to them-that is to say in the world”, concludes Amélie Boukhobza.