Raise your hand if you have adult children. And yes, adult children is an oxymoron, actually—since “adult” and “children” are by definition two stages of life). But that is how we refer to our grown up offspring. Perhaps that is the crux of the matter, and why some parents (God, I hope I am not alone here!) are conflicted when relating to their adult kids.
Me? Well, my husband and I have three beautiful daughters—all over 30, all married for over ten years, and all with children of their own. We are all very close, accessible, and active in nearly all aspects of their lives. We FaceTime, chat on various messenger apps, visit often, and pride ourselves on how involved we are with each other’s daily lives without becoming too involved—in other words, maintaining that delicate balance between aloofness and overbearing. Yet, more often than I care to admit, I will be in the midst of a conversation, a hug, a look, or even just a thought, when suddenly I am flooded with a sense of insecurity, a need to be reassured that I was, and still am, a good mom.
Case in point, we just returned from a wonderful visit with our oldest daughter and her family, who live overseas, and therefore our in-person visits are limited to whenever they come to the states, or we can manage a trip to see them. Overall, great visit, priceless time with our beautiful granddaughters, quality one-on-one time with their parents, and a lot of sharing of things both frivolous and profound. Yet when it was time for us to hop into the Uber for the airport, I hugged my daughter, and there it was…that nagging feeling that I could have done more, said more, or said less, that I did not even come close to measuring up to her standard of parenting, and I blurted out some teary-eyed sentiment along those lines. Yeah, burdening her with that need for assurance—great way to end the visit. To which she predictably replied, “Geez, Mom, please not that, not now.” And while this scenario is not reenacted every time I interact with my kids, or even most of the time, it does occur frequently enough to generate some thoughtful introspection, a kind of personal examination, that actually stops me in my tracks, asking myself, “Wait, again? WTF is wrong with me?”
From the day they are born, children depend on us for everything. Food. Shelter. Guidance. Discipline. Counsel. Education. As we filled those roles and supplied their needs, nurturing them, slowly, surely, undetectably, relentlessly, our identities intertwined with theirs. Their sorrows are our sorrows, their joys our joys. We celebrate their successes and we commiserate when they struggled. These miniature, genetic copies of ourselves alternately look up to us, fear us, love us, trust us, even worship us. We are, for all intents and purposes, the sun, the moon, and the whole world, and they, ours. But of course the envelope of the small, safe world we create can only expand so far, hold so much, and their personas begin to split from ours, demanding more room, different viewpoints, new scenery, so they venture, albeit slowly and gingerly at first, outside our well-meaning but restrictive boundaries. A whole new world presents itself, a cornucopia of hitherto untasted delights, ripe with the promise of new and wonderful experiences; how could they resist? Leaving the safety of our world, they discover a new one, and, in the process, themselves, and they are completely and utterly transformed. No longer mere shadows of our own manufacture—no, they burst free of those restraints and blossom into individuals, seeking their own purpose and path and meaning, casting their own shadow. And in the process, leave us in the dust. As they should. Our job is finished.
Now what? As these children mature, change, become who and what our Creator intended, we marvel at their metamorphosis, we romanticize their childhood, casting doubts on whether we did enough, taught enough, loved enough, forgave enough, let go enough. And we carry these horrible insecurities into our middle age and old age, and when THEY become wives or husbands or parents or teachers—card carrying adults and global citizens—we look back in time, back to when they were small, attributing their successes to our child-rearing and blaming their flops on our own shortcomings. Why? What is it about being a parent, especially a mother, that gives us this predilection, no this obsession, with living our lives vicariously through those we gave birth to? Bad mothers, mediocre mothers, great mothers—it’s irrelevant! Regardless of how we arrive at motherhood, we lose ourselves in the process, subjugating our needs and identity or those of the child. Either way, we are no longer who we were before becoming moms. If we had horrible childhoods, we either replicate our parents’ mistakes or we overcompensate for them by attempting to craft a pseudo-perfect world.
Inevitably, though, the child grows up, leaves, and then we are, for all intents and purposes, unemployed. Better, worse, the same, but nonetheless, unemployed. And not without a sense of almost amnesia. And a very strong urge to be patted on the back, applauded, and yes, dare I say, admired and adored by progeny. Doesn’t work out that way, moms...adults do not consistently and ardently seek out advice and life guidance from their parents. That only happens in Hallmark movies, TV sitcoms, and Bronte sisters’ novels. Grown up offspring do just what we did—leave the nest and cleave to their own.
So, maybe I’m alone in this, maybe all you other parents (moms especially) out there are completely secure in what a great job you did raising your children, and you never second guess yourself or doubt that your kids wouldn’t trade you in for a better mom. Good on ya if that is you. But, if you are like me, and you are not 100 percent secure in your parenting finesse, welcome to my crazy world. Or maybe you are one of those adult children, and your mom or dad has done this to you. Either way, it helps me to think it through, get it all out, and write it down.
