When her children left college, Reese said “sad” and “crying.”

Reese Witherspoon recalls how she reacted when her two oldest children left home to attend college.

The 49-year-old actress has admitted to sending her daughter Ava Phillippe, 26, and her 21-year-old son Deacon Phillippe, whom she shares with her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe, to the university.

“I was saddened that they were going to college and I cried in their room,” the Morning Show star said on a September 20 episode of the AVA and Deacon Milestone interview podcast. “For a year, one of them didn’t go home for Christmas and I sat in their bed and cried.”

The proud mother, who shares her 12-year-old son, Tennessee Toss with her ex-husband Jim Toss, explained why change is particularly challenging.

“It’s a loss because you do everything for them,” she said. “You take food from your mouth and your coat from your back. You won’t sleep.”

The actress continued. “You don’t sleep because you care about their physical needs when they’re young. Or when they get older, you’re just worried that they’ll have a car accident, they’ll go home, they’ll go home, and there’ll be drugs they’ll be involved in.”

However, Witherspoon admitted that watching her child grow up is only part of the process. “Do you just have all the worries your parents have? And one day, if you did the job, you did the right thing, they’ll go,” she said.

“I shed tears now. It’s really difficult. But you know you did the right thing,” the mother of three added.

Witherspoon’s relationship with her older children has since changed, and now she considers her “incredible friend.”

“Ava calls me and becomes like a great friend. Deacon always hangs out in New York, and he tells me about cool restaurants because he can get better bookings than I am now,” she said.

Elsewhere in the conversation, the actress talked about her different approaches to raising her youngest child, Tennessee.

“Whenever I lose my composure,” she said, “I could call my brother and sister towards my youngest child. They put on me. I was very tired. I was very tired. I was eating cookies.”

“And beyond that, I’m very tired. I’ve been raising my children for 25 years,” she added.

Witherspoon was only open to people about dropping off butlers at New York University in 2023.

“It means you did your job right,” she said. “And I’m very proud of my children. They are thriving in the world and I’m very happy with them.”

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The AVA attended the University of California, Berkeley. In 2019, Witherspoon told Ellen DeGeneres how he felt about dropping off his AVA at university.

“It’s strange for your child to go to college. That’s difficult,” she said. “And I didn’t imagine how it felt to my mother. I might have gone to her empty room, lying in her bed and cried when she went to college. But it’s fine, she’ll come back.