By Lissy Bauer 
Senior year is a milestone for our kids. The cap and gown. The countdowns. The college acceptances. It’s the year they’ve dreamed of, the payoff for late-night projects and early morning practices. But tucked inside their excitement is another story, one that belongs to us, the parents. Nobody tells you how it feels to watch the lasts pile up. The last first day. The last permission slip. The last call asking if you can bring their cleats.
I’ve discovered a version of senioritis no one warned me about: Parental Senioritis, the slow, aching realization that this phase is ending and there are no do-overs.
For them, senioritis looks like pulling away. Skipped assignments, drifting through the days with one foot already stretching toward what’s next. Mine feels the opposite. I’m more present than I’ve been in years, clinging to the small, ordinary moments I once brushed past. The sound of their voice calling from the kitchen. The clutter by the stairs. The casual “What’s for dinner?” as if everything is still the same. They are loosening their grip. I am holding on with both hands.
That is the paradox of Parental Senioritis. The ache of pride and grief woven so tightly you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s standing at the last football game, realizing you won’t feel the chill of the bleachers again. It’s hearing their voice crack with excitement or nerves and feeling your whole body surge with protectiveness, even though the days of stepping in are mostly behind you.
The symptoms sneak up on you. You open a bin and find their second-grade “All About Me” book, and suddenly you’re weeping on the floor. You stumble across a note they left two years ago, and your chest folds in on itself. You refresh the college portal more than they do, rehearsing your reaction for every possible outcome. You buy snacks for their friends because you still want the house to be the hangout, even though you know those nights are numbered.
The grief doesn’t wait for the goodbye. It starts while they are still here. While you are still packing lunches and folding the same hoodie. While their shoes sit by the door and the slam still echoes when they come home from school. You miss them while they are brushing their teeth upstairs. You miss the child who still needs you, even as you adore the young adult who doesn’t.
And then there are the questions that come in the quiet. Who will I be when I am no longer needed in the daily way? For years, parenting has been the rhythm that guided me from morning through night. I sort through the pieces of my identity like an old junk drawer. What do I keep? What do I let go of? What still fits when my child doesn’t call me from the field needing cleats?
Well-meaning people say, “You must be so proud.” And I am. But pride doesn’t cancel grief. They live side by side, awkward and uncoordinated, like college roommates who never asked to share a space. Others remind me, “Letting go is part of the job.” And I know that is true. But knowing doesn’t make the silence less sharp. It doesn’t soften the ache of walking past a fridge full of their favorite food or stepping over the laundry they left on the floor.
There isn’t a cure for this part. No sentence takes the sting out. The ache doesn’t shrink just because I remind myself this is how it’s supposed to go. What helps, at least a little, is honesty. Admitting that I’m living through a kind of slow-motion heartbreak. That I’m not the only one crying behind sunglasses in the parking lot or ducking into the laundry room to pull myself together. Talking about it doesn’t make it easier, but it makes you feel less alone in a season that can feel unbearably quiet. You don’t have to call it grief if that word feels too big, but it is something. Something raw that hums under everything.
Maybe Parental Senioritis isn’t something to hide or downplay. Maybe it’s proof. Proof of how hard we loved, how deeply we let this era of parenting shape us. This year belongs to them, and it should. We cheer. We celebrate. We take a hundred photos because we are proud. Yet under all that joy, many of us are carrying something else too. Not instead, just alongside it. A quiet ache.
Loving them this much means feeling the edges of loss even while we clap the loudest. We were there, and now we are here, watching it end not with regret but with reverence. And perhaps a little irrational sobbing in the pasta aisle. If you are feeling it too, this strange season of watching your child bloom away from you, know that it is real. It is valid. It is not weakness or inability to let go. It is Parental Senioritis. And it is proof you showed up. Proof you did not miss it. Proof you loved them so fully that it actually hurts to watch them fly.
That pain is the price of presence. And I would not trade it for anything
by Kathy Wetsell 
by Tabitha Milam 
by Kelsey Scism 
