Strictly speaking, visit was all down to homesickness

This can be a fraught time of year for many parents struggling with their offspring leaving the nest for the first time. Whatever the changes to be navigated at home, there is also the constant worry that your child is coping well in their new environment. And guess what? That worry never seems to go away. This term, The Student went off happily for her third year at university only to ping back again at the weekend quite quickly and unexpectedly on the pretext of picking up something she’d left at home.

A minor meltdown where the only explanation seemed to be “feeling a wee bit overwhelmed” turned into the revelation to both her and her parents that our fiercely independent and famously non-homesick daughter was in fact feeling a bit homesick.

This coincided with her joy at the squalor of student flat-sharing dimming slightly as the squalor was now becoming a bit, well, squalid and a summer of being away from home during holidays as well as term time.

Having been reassured the blip was nothing more worrying than this, it meant me and Mr P were able to go into full-on home comforts mode because, let’s face it, one of the things we miss when a child leaves home is being able to offer the homeliness that we have spent the previous 18 years creating.

Luckily, the meltdown happened on the weekend that the new series of Strictly started. Never underestimate the restorative powers of Strictly, a game of Scrabble and a homecooked meal.

None of the home comforts we like to offer our children have to be fancy, just familiar. For us, the shared joy of chatting about the contestants, costumes and dancing prowess in Strictly is a great comfort. Board games let us chat whilst playing and my cooking generally leads to shared hilarity at meals gone by, such as the time I made a prawn stir-fry and forgot the prawns.

The Student went off (again) quite happily and we were happy to have been able to flex our parenting muscles in a small way. But the worrying? Neverending...

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None of the home comforts we like to offer our children have to be fancy, just familiar.