DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Some of my friends think I’m weird, but I really, really love having my kids home from school. Summers and school breaks are the best! I even didn’t mind the COVID virtual school situation, which I know makes me a freak, but I guess I’m a freak then.

Now that my five kids started the new school year, I’m having a hard time adjusting, even more so than the usual start of the school year blues I always get. When the bus picked them up the first day of school, all the other parents were celebrating. I smiled along with them, but really felt like crying.

While the kids are at school I do some freelance medical transcribing a few hours a week for the family practice where I worked before staying home fulltime, so it isn’t like I have nothing to do all day.

I can’t seem to get past missing them so much during the day, after they go off to school. Am I nuts? --- MISS MY KIDS

DEAR MISS MY KIDS: I don’t think missing your kids is a strange or nutsy thing to do, especially after just having them with you throughout the weeks of their summer break.

What I do think is that you need to cultivate more ways to fill in the void they leave when they get on the bus each day, especially if your freelance work is done in your home.

It would probably be better for you if you got out of the too quiet house and had time around other people, which is likely to engage your mind more fully than working alone at home can be expected to do.

Volunteering somewhere in the community is one option you may want to explore. It’d get you out of the house and give you other things to focus on, and volunteers are certainly in short supply these days.

Another tried-and-true remedy to empty nest blues is taking a class offered during your kids’ school hours. Again, it could provide you with a social out, and a physical or academic challenge you might enjoy and be enriched by.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: When my first wife and I bought our first home we really worked long and hard to save up for a decent downpayment and spent well under what our bank preapproved us for.

We knew we wanted to start a family within a couple years of moving in and we planned for my wife to only have to work if she wanted to once the kids came and if my business took off enough to support us all.

The business took longer to grow than expected, and we barely made it out of the 2001 recession.

This all meant my wife ended up still working after our son was born, and we stayed in our “starter” house until he was in high school.

Our son sent me and his stepmother the link to the plans for a house he and his girlfriend are looking to build just outside Chicago. It will be a beautiful house, but it’s double the size of the house he grew up in, with four bedrooms, three baths, a den, a media room, and a two-car garage.

My son and his girlfriend have been together for nearly six years and they are talking about getting married. But taking on a big mortgage seems like a huge commitment for an unmarried couple.

Our son is in a good, stable (if any are these days!) job, and his girlfriend is an AP high school teacher. The house is in a good location for both of their jobs, but my wife and I keep talking it over and thinking they are getting in way over their heads and don’t have a clue.

What do we say to them to help persuade them to cool their jets on building a big and expensive house right now and first get their feet wet with a smaller one? --- THEY’RE OVERBUYING

DEAR THEY’RE OVERBUYING: Although, in my experience, lending institutions tend to prequalify potential borrowers at the very top of their earnings range, if your son and his girlfriend are being conservative, they might not be getting into as deep a mortgage debt as you fear.

As concerned parents, you can share your thoughts and worries with the younger couple, but that’s where I’d leave off in the present circumstances.

My guess is if they’ve gotten to the point of selecting plans for their future home, they’ve taken steps to secure financing. They may already be far enough into the home-building process to have some understanding of what they’re doing, at least for now.

If not, they’ll have to learn to make it work, as you and your first wife and countless other young couples have done forever.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My mother died almost six years ago. She and my dad had a beautiful marriage, and he suffered terribly when she died. We all did. She was a real life force.

Dad started going with “Mary” three years ago. At first they were just friends, but it has become a real romance. Dad told me that he asked Mary to move in with him. He is still in the three-bedroom rambler we were raised, and I know it has been too empty for him for a long time.

Mary said she would consider living with Dad, but wants not to live in the bigger home, when she says her apartment is big enough for the two of them and much cheaper to live in than a whole house. But Dad wants to keep the house so when my brother’s family and the cousins come to visit there’s room for everyone and a place for the kids to play outside in the big backyard.

It also has become a tradition for us to all get together at my dad’s for Thanksgiving, as we often did when my mom was still alive.

I don’t live too far away, have a house and yard big enough to handle visitors, and have told my dad we can move the family gatherings to my place, so if he wants to move in with Mary at her place and sell the house, it’s all good.

But he says he won’t sell, and Mary won’t move in there, and I honestly don’t get why they are both being so stubborn.

Does this mean neither of them is really committed to their relationship? --- don’t GET IT

DEAR DON’T GET IT: It’s possibly a case of one or both of the couple not truly being ready to make too big a shift just yet. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a sufficient level of commitment on either side.

That your dad made the offer to have Mary move into the house he shared with his long-time love tells me that he’s open to the next steps in his newer relationship. And Mary claims to be ready to have your dad move into her place, which she sees as the more practical choice for the couple moving forward.

Whatever the case, it’s up to Mary and your dad to work it out. You’ve covered the angle of providing a family gathering spot, so I’d just give it some time and see where it all goes from here.