Every August, minivans across the GTA fill up with mattress toppers, power bars, and a teenager pretending to be less nervous than they are. The drive to Kingston or Ottawa or London or Waterloo is loud with logistics. The drive home is very quiet.
Two transitions happen in that van, and only one of them gets talked about.
The student is leaving home for the first time, taking their entire support system down to a phone screen. The parents are returning to a house with one fewer person in it and a role that just ended in its familiar form. Both of these are real losses wrapped inside a good thing, which is exactly the kind of grief people don’t feel entitled to.
This post is for both seats in the van.
For the student: what nobody says at orientation
Orientation covers course selection and where the gym is. It doesn’t cover the third week of September, when the novelty wears off, the workload lands, and you’re eating dinner alone for the first time in your life wondering why everyone else seems to have found their people already.
Some things worth knowing in advance.
Homesickness is not a character flaw. Missing your bed, your dog, your mom’s cooking, and even the sibling you fought with is a sign your attachments are healthy, not that you made the wrong choice. It typically peaks in the first six to eight weeks and eases as the new place accumulates its own familiarity. Fighting it or hiding it tends to prolong it. Naming it usually shrinks it.
Everyone is performing settledness. The residence floor is a theatre where every first-year is acting more adjusted than they feel, each one convinced the act is true of everyone but them. The students who adjust fastest are usually the ones who break the performance first: “honestly, I’ve been pretty homesick,” said out loud, is a friendship accelerant.
Structure left with your parents. At home, meals happened, laundry happened, mornings had a shape. Now the entire scaffolding is yours to build, on top of a harder academic load, with a fully loaded social buffet next door. The first skill of first year isn’t calculus. It’s building a week you can live inside: consistent sleep anchors, actual meals, movement, and a study rhythm that doesn’t depend on panic.
Your mental health history moves with you. If anxiety, low mood, ADHD, or social anxiety were part of your picture at home, a new city doesn’t reset them, and the transition usually turns the volume up before you’ve rebuilt supports. Your age group carries the heaviest load here: a 2026 University of Toronto analysis of Statistics Canada survey data found that 24.2 percent of Canadians aged 20 to 24, nearly 1 in 4, have experienced social anxiety at some point, the highest rate of any age group. If walking into rooms full of strangers is the specific fear, have a plan for it rather than a hope about it.
Know your supports before you need them. Campus counselling services are free, on-site, and staffed by people who spend all day with exactly your situation. For a lot of students, that’s the right first stop, and we’d rather you use it than struggle unsupported. Their main limitation is capacity: session caps and waitlists that grow as the semester ages. Which leads to a piece of timing advice.
If you’re in therapy now, or starting it this month, you may not have to give it up. Because InnerSight runs sessions online across all of Ontario, a student who begins with a therapist in Vaughan this August keeps that same therapist after move-in, whether the new address is in Ottawa, Thunder Bay, or a residence hall two hours away. The relationship, the history, the momentum all survive the move. For students who already know September will be heavy, starting now means arriving on campus with support already running.
For the parents: the other half of the van
Empty nest gets played for laughs, the tearful mom repurposing a bedroom into a gym. What’s actually happening deserves more respect: a role you performed daily for eighteen years just changed shape overnight, and daily active parenting, the making of lunches, the waiting up, the ambient monitoring, ended without a ceremony.
Common experiences in the first months: reaching for your phone to check a location app that no longer matters. Cooking too much food. A marriage that suddenly has unstructured time and has to remember what it talks about besides the kids. Relief, and then guilt about the relief. Grief, and then embarrassment about the grief, because “they’re fine, this is good news.”
It is good news. And it’s a loss. Both are true, and the parents who move through it best are the ones who let both be true instead of choosing.
Two suggestions from our therapy rooms. First, agree on a communication rhythm with your kid before move-in, a baseline like a Sunday call, so that neither silence nor constant texting becomes the default. Silence feeds parental anxiety; constant contact feeds the student’s homesickness and slows the exact independence the whole project is for. Second, treat the empty space as a question rather than a void. The years ahead have room in them for whatever active parenting crowded out. If the question “what now” has no answer yet, that’s not a crisis. That’s a life transition, and it deserves the same attention you’d give any other one.
If the worry doesn’t settle, or if your student calls in genuine distress and you’re not sure how to respond from two hundred kilometres away, our guide on supporting someone you love covers the ground, and individual therapy is as available to the parent as to the student.
The younger siblings clause
One more seat in the house changes: the sibling who stays. They lose a daily companion, inherit an altered family dynamic, and sometimes absorb a double portion of parental attention they didn’t order. Younger teens can wobble through September for reasons that look unrelated. If that’s your household, our posts on back-to-school anxiety and youth therapy cover that seat too.
Frequently Asked Questions About the University Transition
How long does homesickness last in first year?
For most students it peaks in the first six to eight weeks and fades as routines and friendships take root. Homesickness that deepens instead of easing past midterm season, or that comes with persistent low mood, sleep problems, or withdrawal, is worth bringing to a professional.
Should my student use campus counselling or a private therapist?
Campus counselling is free, nearby, and built for student concerns, and for many students it’s the right first stop. Private therapy earns its cost when the student wants continuity with a therapist they already trust, needs more sessions than campus caps allow, or prefers not to wait as campus lists lengthen through the fall.
Can my teen keep their Vaughan therapist after moving away for school?
Yes, if they’re staying in Ontario. Our therapists work online across the province, so sessions continue by video from residence or an apartment in any Ontario city. Students attending school outside Ontario should ask us about options, since regulations differ across provinces.
How often should I check in with my first-year student?
Agree on a rhythm together before move-in rather than improvising. A scheduled weekly call plus organic texting is a common landing spot. The goal is a pattern that reassures you without requiring them to manage your anxiety from their dorm room.
Is it normal to grieve when my child leaves for university?
Yes. A daily role of eighteen years just ended in its familiar form, and grieving that while also being proud and happy is the standard human response, not a contradiction. It usually softens over the fall. If it slides toward persistent emptiness or low mood, therapy helps.
My student is really struggling. What are the signs it’s beyond normal adjustment?
Watch for withdrawal from all social contact, marked changes in eating or sleeping, dropping grades paired with hopeless talk, substance use as the main coping tool, or any mention of self-harm. Those go beyond homesickness. Encourage professional support promptly, campus or private, and if there’s any safety concern, treat it as urgent.
Two Good Years Are Starting, Not One
September opens a new chapter for the student and, less noticed, for the parents. Both chapters go better with the right support in place before the boxes are packed.
We offer a free 20-minute consultation for students, parents, or both. In person in Vaughan, Woodbridge, and Barrie, online across Ontario, evenings and weekends available.
Book your free consultation or call (905) 553-9507.
Believe in better, in both directions on the 401.