It's about connections. These small connections, constant connections, they're the roots of parenting a teenager, keeping a connection because it is a time when you could completely lose that connection because everything is completely different from what you've just been through in their childhood.

And I think, you know, watching things together, then chatting is a very strong connection.

Well, that's Lorraine Candy, an award-winning journalist and parenting expert who wants us to understand that routine is a big part of keeping connected as a family.

I'm Lizelle. Welcome to this episode of the Lizelle Wellbeing Show brought to you in partnership with TV Licensing.

Now, I'm on a bit of a mission to find ways for all of us to thrive in later life by investing in our health and our wellbeing today.

So do you currently have an empty nest? Are you a few years away but already getting upset at the thought of being left at home without the energy of your children around?

Perhaps you're a couple of years in and want to make sure that you're really making the most of your exciting empty nest life.

For me, well, I've done this a number of times already. You may know that my eldest, Lily, she's now in her early 30s.

So it seems an age ago that I was settling her into her fresh as week at uni.

And my first experience of doing a swoop around IKEA with scores of other parents, you know, similarly filling their oversized trolleys with duvetes, pasta bowls, mugs.

And my own essential actually a pair of wooden toaster tongs to prevent a hazardous knife down the toaster accident, along with Lily's own uni digs essentials, which I seem to remember, consisting mostly of colorful paper lampshades and bedroom fairy lights.

Yeah. Well, her brothers and younger sister, Brawler seemed a little bit more straightforward piling the car high with bedding and most of my bath towels.

So the time kit went off last year. We were down to a simple bootload of home stuff and a guitar.

Mind you, this was followed by an emergency mail or delivery of a few forgotten essentials, including such basics as a knife and fork and a pillow.

Well, I so remember those days of packing the car, saying goodbye to each and every one of the family, including the pets, even the gerbels, they got a goodbye hug.

And that final moment when we hugged goodbye and they went off without a backward glance, a good thing to see them happy and secure in their life choices.

But boy, what a wrench coming home to the open door of a neat tidy, but overwhelmingly empty bedroom is a bit of a moment for sure.

And any parent of adult kids will know that our children tend to come and go in and out of the family home over the years.

But the first time they leave heading off to uni, well, that can be heart wrenchingly painful content.

And it can be really hard to make space for all the things that we're feeling with so many practicalities to tend to.

Let's teaching them to use the washing machine. I'm not quite sure that I'm there with some of mine, hoping and praying they might eat a vegetable or two in the months that they're away.

I actually get around that one by sending the old food parcel of green powders to make sure that breakfast shakes and smoothies are the order of the day.

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