Like most mothers of high school seniors, Kerry Barto was proud but petrified at the thought of her 18-year-old son, Conor, leaving the nest for college.
However, in the months leading up to his departure last fall, the New York native mother of three noticed a change in her middle son.
Her sweet child, now 20 years old, had suddenly become strange, a little bold and easily distracted by girls and social media. But the change in Conor’s behavior was not a typical teenage problem.
“He was fouling the nest,” Barto, 52, a life coach from Jackson Heights who now lives in New Hampshire, told The Post.
“There’s this thing that happens, where kids who go to college become more argumentative or more distant because they have all these conflicting emotions about leaving,” she explained.
“By doing otherwise,” Barto added, “they are unconsciously making it easier to leave home and easier for us to let them go.”
And, as usual, mom is right on the money.
Flying the cage before the first year can be just as unnerving for a teenager as it is for the parents who often tearfully watch them depart.
“Socket Pollution” [phenomenon] it’s a shift in anxiety about going to college,” said NYU Langone Health child and adolescent psychologist Yamalis Diaz.
“That anxiety can manifest as irritability, disrespect, or fighting because they’re both excited and scared to be away from home.”
Well-meaning moms and dads have taken extreme measures to smooth the transition.
Some have recruited $10,000 “moms for hire” to take care of a child’s food and laundry needs while they’re on campus. Others have put their family homes up for sale and moved to their students’ college town to maintain a sense of togetherness.
But instead of breaking the bank to hire help, or uprooting the nest to be closer to the yard, Diaz suggests parents deal with the mixed emotions—instead of rebellion—that their child may be dealing with before make their grand exit.
“Evaluate the feelings you think your child might be experiencing, talk about the specific bad behavior they’ve been exhibiting,” she advised. “Set boundaries about what behavior is and isn’t acceptable.”
“Then work together to come up with a plan to avoid arguments and keep the peace before he or she makes that big move.”
Whitney Cicero, 54, of Los Angeles, tells The Post that the heart-to-heart with her 18-year-old son went a long way toward restoring peace before his early move to Louisiana’s Tulane University in March. General Zer, whose name Cicero chose not to reveal for privacy, was rumored to play tight end on the school’s football team and left home in the spring for practice.
“Those three months before he left were tough,” said Cicero, an influencer marketing expert turned stand-up comedian. The married mother of two, known to fans online as @TheNewStepford, recently became a full-time prankster to laugh at the pain of being an empty nester.
“When teenagers start fouling the nest, it’s like rabid a-holes,” she teased, noting her son’s cold shoulder and newfound penchant for staying out until 4:30 a.m. “I felt like I was I became invisible and insignificant.”
But after several mother-son conversations on long-distance trips and several months of being more than 1,800 miles away from home, Cicero says her “warm sweet boy” finally melted.
“There is hope,” she assured the other parents with a sigh of relief. Her son now calls and texts her regularly. “We’re in a really good place.”
Meredith Masony, 43, a married mother of three from Jacksonville, Florida, is looking forward to being on the other side of the once “dirty” saga when eldest son, Matias, settles at Florida International University in Miami this September.
“He’s definitely pushed and pulled and tested us to see what he can get away with because he thinks he’s an adult,” the parenting influencer said. Recently, the 18-year-old narrowly missed curfew to play poker with his friends at all hours of the night.
“The other day he said, ‘In a couple of weeks, I’m not going to live here anymore – this is not going to be my home,’ and that made me really sad,” Masony admitted. “And I said, ‘No. This will always be your home. Wherever I am, it’s home.'”
“My children are my heart walking outside my body,” she said. “Once he’s out on his own and past adulthood, I hope we can be friends.”
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