The ride home can be more uncomfortable than you thought it would be. Your daughter is no longer in the car. Neither are her winter coats, her duvet cover, her three pillows, and the bulletin board full of pictures of her high school friends. You feel relieved, but you also feel anxious. She seems so young—Boston is a big city—college can be stressful. Maybe you should have stayed in her dorm room a little longer, reassured her a bit more. Maybe you should have encouraged her to take the stuffed animal that she’s slept with every night since she was eight, but refused to bring because she didn’t want her roommate to think she was the kind of person who still slept with a stuffed animal.

You know, of course, that the best thing you can do at this point is focus on the road ahead, literally and metaphorically. You’re a thoughtful and circumspect adult. You’ll find your way. At the moment, however, you are simply determined not to cry. At least not until you pull into your driveway, when the dog runs out to greet you carrying the stuffed animal your daughter left behind.

When a son or daughter goes to college, it’s not just the child’s life that changes so dramatically. Parents have more time—time to worry and time to rediscover. Most parents do a bit of both.

BU Today spoke with Bonnie Teitleman (SSW’83), director of BU’s Faculty & Staff Assistance office and a psychiatric social worker with expertise in marriage and family counseling, about some of the rewards and worries that often lie ahead after what she calls this “normative life crisis.”

“What that means is it’s a crisis, and it’s also a normal situation that comes along in the life of many middle-class families,” says Teitleman. “It’s a normal transition that people go through.”

For parents, she says, it can be a wonderful opportunity to enjoy a bit more freedom, and a bit more of each other. Or not.

“It can be a roller-coaster ride of emotions,” Teitleman says. “It can go from elation and joy to heartbreak and loneliness and despair over the loss of the child, but a healthy emotional reaction acknowledges that it’s a change. And that there are going to be some emotional challenges and maybe some practical challenges, and it will take some time to establish a new equilibrium.”

Exactly how long it will take to establish that equilibrium varies from couple to couple, and parent to parent. “It depends on the quality of the relationship,” she says. “If the couple has continued to nurture their relationship over the years of the marriage, it can be good. But for marriages where, for whatever reason, the couple has grown apart, it can be a vulnerable time.”

One reason parents start thinking hard about their relationship has nothing to do with how well they have tended their garden. It’s about their age. “People generally send children to college around when they hit that gatepost age of 50,” says Teitleman. “They start thinking ‘I’m 50, I’m not 30 anymore.’ And they take stock of their lives.”

One possible problem, she says, is that they may be taking stock of their lives in the wake of the most stressful years of child-rearing, years that are focused on getting their son or daughter into the best college possible. That, she says, is a common affliction in many families in type A communities, where there are too many conversations with friends and neighbors about test scores and campus visits. “One good thing people can do about that is try not to get in conversations about where you are considering schools that you are applying to and talking about scores,” she says. “All of that is best avoided.”

She cautions that if couples coming off stressful years of parenting turn to each other and realize that, with their child gone, they have nothing to say, an empty nest can be a real crisis point.

“On the other hand,” Teitleman says. “If it’s a couple that has continued to nurture each other and the marriage, they can turn toward each other and say, ‘Wow, we’ve got an empty nest, let’s plan some trips, let’s go to dinner, let’s do things.’”

One good way to enjoy each other, she says, is to learn something new together. New languages or new hobbies, like photography or gardening, offer shared experiences and new conversation. Cooking courses can be fun and can pay off with new friends and delicious meals. Active parents could try hiking or playing tennis or golf. Also, she says, many community schools and libraries offer interesting lectures and courses. Couples who live close to Boston or New York have dozens of museums to visit, as well as a smorgasbord of concerts, many of them free. Most libraries have book groups, and local historic societies often welcome volunteers.

Just remember: A home without kids can be a challenge, Teitleman says. Or it can be an opportunity.