Soiling the Nest – 35

You spend nine months nesting, making your everything just right so that your beautiful newborn will know, from the very beginning, that home will always be the safe place.

Then, 18 years later, that little chick you've been loving and coddling and providing for graduates and you burst with pride. Next stop: Leaving home. And then it happens. Your beautiful child morphs into a surly, argumentative and disrespectful pain in the ass. We call it soiling the nest. 

If you're not familiar with the term "soiling the nest", you've probably never graduated a high school senior preparing to start college, never had kids, or are one of the lucky few whose son or daughter is a mature, well-adjusted teen. It's what kids do to make saying goodbye to their childhood home and life as they know it a little less painful, a little less scary. 

This year, teens across America are continuing the age-old tradition of being difficult (and sometimes downright obnoxious) in preparation for the transition. Parents are doing their part by becoming ever-more controlling and clingy. This parent-child dance that often happens when a fledgling is about to fly the coop makes it easier for everyone to let go. 

Everything is different in 2020, however, as families come to accept that there may not be a move-in day, a tearful good-bye at the curb, or mom's ugly crying over the baby book once she gets home. It's pandemic parenting in our new reality. Your freshman is home for the foreseeable future. 

Now where the hell is the wine?