‘It’s so hard’: Kate Hudson reveals pain of oldest child leaving home

‘It’s a big one’, she admitted

Kate Hudson has opened up about the pain of watching her oldest child leave home for university.

The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery star spoke candidly about adjusting to family life without her son, Ryder, who moved across the country to start college earlier this year.

“Ugh, it's so hard,” she began. “All you want is your kid to thrive and be happy, but man, when I'm in LA and I go to the coffee machine in the morning and I don't hear his voice - it's a big one,” she told Willie Geist in an interview with Sunday Today.

The 43-year-old has found solidarity among celebrity friends Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon, however.

“Our kids were in school together,” she said of Paltrow, mother of 18-year-old college student Apple Martin.

“We both had that moment together, where we look at each other and we're like, 'How ya doing?' Because we experienced it at the same time. And Reese. All three of us ladies, our kids went to college at the same time.”

Hudson admitted that she has tried to minimise the difficult emotions she has experienced following her son’s departure from the family home, joking, “I'm good, I'm good!

“But inside you're just like, 'uggggghhh’,” she revealed.

As well as her oldest son, Hudson also has a four-year-old daughter, Rani, with fiancé Danny Fujikawa, and 11-year-old Bingham, with her ex-partner Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.

Having three children to three different fathers works for Hudson, however.

“Ryder is in college and very happy,” she said in a recent interview.

“Chris and I just need to check in once in a while. Matt is so wonderful - I couldn’t have asked for a better co-parent. For me it’s like, you loved this person. That doesn’t just go away, but you can re-establish a different kind of love. You can have an amazing time with an ex-partner because you’re really only focused on the love of your child.”

She added that her blended family constitutes a “strong unit”, adding that she spends her holidays with Bellamy and his wife, model Elle Evans.