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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
A RETIRED PARENT 2005-03-14 My youngest child left home for good nearly four years ago, when he moved into his own apartment during his second year of college. He lived in the dorms the first year and so was able to come home for the summer, but in his sophomore year he rented an apartment with a roommate and signed a one year lease. That meant two things: no more coming home for the summer and finding a job near his apartment to pay the rent. On the day he moved into his apartment, my job as his mother was really over, and thirty years of parenting him and his three older siblings finally ended. I say finally ended because I was letting go of my parenting duties little bit by little bit from the day my oldest child, and only daughter, went off to kindergarten. And I have to admit, that of all the things I did as a parent, the most painful, and in some ways the most difficult, was letting go of my children. I have always believed that the tasks associated with parenting can be summed up in three words: Love, Limits, and Letting Go. Our first task, of course, is to love our children. That doesn't mean feeling wonderful good feelings the minute you lay eyes on your newborn. Some mothers are filled with instant feelings of love, some aren't. It also doesn't mean giving children things, or being afraid to discipline them, or always telling them how wonderful they are even when they're not. Instead, loving children means taking care of them, protecting them when they need protecting and encouraging them to take care of themselves when they can. Loving them means being there for them, refraining from judging and criticizing them, and spending time listening to them. It means showing them you are proud of them when they do things well or even make a good stab at it, and teaching them patiently how to do things they haven't yet learned to do. It means accepting them for who they are and not trying to make them into something they're not. Limits refers to discipline, teaching right from wrong, and applying consequences when necessary to reinforce the teaching. It involves helping children learn how to be part of the human family by behaving with civility towards others, and obeying rules meant to keep them safe. It involves more than just teaching obedience, though, which tends to lose its pull right around adolescence if not before. It involves teaching children to understand and manage their feelings so that they don't behave violently when they are angry, as well as teaching them to think so that they can make wise decisions regarding their behavior. It involves teaching them to understand the effects of their behavior on other people and to refrain from certain behaviors because the basic law of civilization is to do unto others what you would have them do to you. Letting go, for me the hardest parenting challenge of all, means letting your children grow up and experience life without you there protecting them, warning them, advising them, and telling them what to do. And it starts the first time you take them to school and put them in the regular care of other adults. You can't tell them how to react if the teacher gets angry or blames them unfairly for something. You can't prompt them to ask the teacher if they can go to the bathroom when they need to go. You also can't tell the teacher to treat your precious baby with the same care you have tenderly given her for the first years of her life. You must trust that the teacher will be fair and caring and that your child will learn how to fend for herself. I may have shed a tear or two the first time my children went off to kindergarten, but the most tears were shed when they went to college. That was the worst! My daughter was only seventeen when she left for college and she and I both cried. Even though I knew she was going to be rooming with her best friend, I worried and felt such a loss. She was the first to leave and she left such an empty spot in the house. When my oldest son left, I cried again, this time after I said good-bye. The dorm seemed so cold and impersonal and he didn't even know who his roommates were going to be. Then my next son left for college 3000 miles away and his father and I had to leave him at his dorm before any other students arrived, as we had obligations at home. He was alone in a strange city with no relatives or friends and I cried for miles as we drove away. By the time my youngest left, I thought I was a pro at dropping kids off at college, so I wasn't prepared for the haunting sadness I would feel as I returned to my very quiet and empty house, no longer bustling with babies, toddlers or teenagers. Once they established themselves in college, however, I still hadn't mastered the task of letting them go. Now it may sound easy to let your adult children make their own decisions, but it isn't. The first time they come home with a new "look" and you hardly recognize them it's hard, or the first time they come close to failing a class in college, or the first time you hear about their trip to Baja California to legally drink at the age of 18, or the time you're desperate to tell them that the girlfriend or boyfriend they have fallen in love with will only break their heart. It's hard to let go of your children for many reasons. Of course you don't want them to be hurt and you wish you could just prevent all those mistakes they are bound to make, but you also have difficulty letting go for other reasons. One is that you miss them terribly and you almost don't know what to do instead of worry. After all, the preparation for letting children go to make their own way in college is not one that gives you much confidence. It involves years of worry about the craziness of their teen years. After all your sleepless nights waiting for them to come home, and endless fights with them over the last stupid decision they made, how can you just trust them to make the right decisions in college? And so we can't help nagging a little ("Honey, I don't think you ought to go to Tijuana with your friends") or asking a few too many questions ("How are your grades?") or giving a little too much advice ("You know if you do your homework before you go out, at least you'll know it's done and you can have a good time.") And then, of course, you'll hear things like "I know mom" or "You don't have to tell me what to do" or even "Mom, will you just leave me alone?" This obviously doesn't help your relationship, although it may help your son or daughter miss you less. The other reason it's hard to let go is because you see your success as a parent reflected in what your children do. We have so many decisions we have to make as parents. Do we spank or use time out? How strict will we be? Do we force them to eat their vegetables? Do we enroll them in sports or music lessons or both? Do we help them with homework or make them do it themselves? Do we give them a curfew and if so, what is a good time to expect them to come home? Do we make them apologize when they have done something wrong? Do we let them experience consequences or do we step in to protect them? We have to make choices like this everyday and the only way we ultimately know whether or not we are good enough parents, having made the right choices, is to look at the finished product: our child. If we are happy with our child's behavior and choices, we may feel like successful parents. If not, then often we feel like our job is not finished and we think we have to keep nagging and giving advice, even after our child has left home. Ultimately, I learned that I had to let my children make a few mistakes and even learn the hard way. I began to see that any nagging or reminding only irritated them. Usually, regardless of what I said, they did what they wanted to do and the result I dreaded and tried to prevent happened anyway. So my nagging and reminding was pointless, on the one hand, and destructive on the other. All I was doing was hurting my relationship with my grown children. So now, a few years older and wiser, and with all my children successfully through college and three of them married, I have learned that although I am still tempted from time to time to act as an active rather than a retired parent, I try hard to resist the temptation. The most important thing in the world to me is to maintain a good relationship with my children and that means letting them make their own decisions, including what I may see as mistakes (although in truth I think they mostly make wise decisions), and let them live their own lives. I had eighteen years to nurture each one of them, protect them, teach them and love them. Now all I really have to do is love them, and I am learning that that is enough. I have learned, and sometimes am still learning, to let them go. But it hasn't been easy. |