My brother and his wife are experiencing empty nest syndrome!

I haven't gone thru that just yet and I'm not really looking forward to it. I have been raising children since I was 21 and I'll be 54 soon so that is a huge part of my life. My youngest is 16 and so it won't be long before I'll be in that spot. Not sure how I'll feel. I think your brother and his wife should use the time to re-connect with each other. Now they won't have have the kids they should have time to go out together and spend alone time together.

This could be a good thing. I know parents that still have their children living with them, adult children. Some kids just don't want to grow up.

I think I know what you mean, that also happened to the mother of my sister-in-law last year. She's a stay-at-home mom and she generally feeds everyone every day, taking care of them etc. Then last year, ALL of them decides to get married and leave home at once. She was left without no one, cooking for herself (since the husband is in another city working). By Christmas time, she was depressed. All her kids were in the in-laws house, and they were left alone. To keep her from being depressed, she went into hobbies like gardening, flower arrangement and stuff. I think that is common to people who were very busy with kids then the next thing, they're all gone. But it doesn't have to be like that forever, eventually they will adjust. I think a good thing for your sister-in-law is to keep herself busy. Have a small business of jams or something if she likes cooking. How bout sewing and other stuff? Try to help her and keep her from thinking about her kids who has their own lives now. Remember that the idle mind is always the devil's playground. So, to keep the relationship okay, she should not be bored!

Your sister-in-law needs to find some hobbies to keep herself occupied. I would also think this would be a great time to go on weekend trips and just enjoy their time together. I went through this when my daughters moved out but I found things to keep me busy but I also was working outside the home. I started to make scented candles, writing poetry and gardening. Not to mention trips to visit family and just getaways for the weekend or a week. I hope that she finds some type of happiness with the empty nest syndrome. She just has to replace the time that she spent taking care of the kids with other things that maybe she had put off because of the family. Good luck to her.

well i for one feel really bad for that family due to the fact that one of there kids committed a murder and another is that there family is messed up it is like a divorce gone bad but all i can see best of wishes to that family hope it gets better

Never heard of an empty nest syndrome. How do they usually act when they have that kind of syndrome? because my parents were also alone on their own since my siblings and I were studying quite far from home, and we usually gather twice in a year. We just teased them by calling them "newly weds".