Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Kids Carys, 17, & Dylan, 20, Look So Grown Up Before Heading Back To School

The first day of school is always hard – for the parents! Catherine Zeta-Jones shared a new photo of her son, Dylan, and daughter, Carys, while marveling how her babies have grown up to be ‘young adults.’

“Summer [is] officially over in our family,” Catherine Zeta-Jones, 50, captioned her Sept. 2 Instagram photo of a shirtless Dylan Douglas, 20, and his sister, 17-year-old Carys Zeta Douglas. The Red 2 star apparently was having some pre-empty nest syndrome and felt the need to reflect on another summer spent with her and Michael Douglas’s children. “Today both our young adults go back to studying,” she added, “In different, unprecedented ways. I love you both… And to all kids out there. Knowledge is the key to life. So battle through. This too shall pass.”

Though, saying that Catherine is feeling “empty nest” might be inaccurate. Dylan has been enrolled at Brown University since 2018, making him a Junior this year, and Carys usually attends boarding school. However, COVID-19 has played havoc on the school year. Brown, for example, has implemented a phased approach to welcoming students back. A limited number of students were permitted on campus in late August, and all undergraduate classes will be taught remotely until Oct. 5. If Rhode Island’s coronavirus case count diminishes over the next two weeks, and the number of on-campus students testing positive for COVID is “sufficiently low,” then Brown will continue its reopening. However, if things don’t improve by Sept. 11, the remainder of the semester will be remote.

Catherine shared Dylan’s first day of college to her Instagram. “Let the lectures really begin! I love you, Dylan. Good luck in the next exciting and enlightening chapter of your life,” she captioned a video of Dylan moving into his dorm room, scored by “My. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. Catherine also paid her son a visit in October 2019, sharing a photo of them “on campus.”

Michael revealed that while it’s a bit bittersweet to watch his babies grow up and leave home, it does have some perks. “Carys is in boarding school, she’s gone so sort of unexpected. She really wanted to take off,” Michael said during a 2019 PaleyFest NY event for The Kominsky Method, per Closer Weekly. “It was unexpected because we actually moved to be five minutes from the school that she’d been going to after having had a 45-minute drive, and she was really happy. And then all of a sudden this moment came, so we go ‘what are we going to do now?’”

“You spend a lot of time talking about your kids, and all of a sudden…” said Michael, “and then we got over that very quickly! And now we’re like, ‘wow, we can do anything in our schedules without … obviously the holiday stuff.’ But other than that during the week and everything. So we’re taking full advantage of that, seeing a lot of shows and traveling a lot.“