Tag: adult children

Parents of older kids: You’re not done yet

Hello, parents of adult children. How you doing? Things are so much easier now than when your kids were little, right? 

Yeah, I know. Kind of yes, but also very much no. Things are easier because you’re not constantly fixing snacks and breaking up fights and soothing them through night terrors. But they’re also so harder because . . . well, if you know, you know.  

It’s easier because your children are adults, and they make their own choices, and they don’t depend on you for every little thing. It’s also harder because your children are adults, and they make their own choices, and you don’t always get to pick which things they depend on you for.  

They’re big and they have cars and bank accounts and relationships and politics and worldviews of their own, but also they are still your children, and they are still, in some ways, what you made them to be. It’s still personal. It will always be personal.  

This is not going to be a ‘parenting as death march’ essay where I lament over the unceasing agony of it all, or where I beamoan the lives my older kids are living, and then tell you how I’m managing to soldier on in spite of the pain.  

Actually, I think my adult kids are neat. Wonderful, even. Like every human being I know, all of them are struggling with various things, but all of them are also succeeding in various ways, and I’m proud of them all, and I like being with them.  

They’re good people, and interesting beyond words. And yes, it’s a relief that they can all pour their own dang milk! Sometimes they even run to the store to get milk for me.  

Sometimes I think about how, when my husband and I first became parents, we were still more or less kids ourselves. We had a lot of growing up to do, and that meant our parenting was sorely lacking in many ways. Then I think about how that’s still true.  

Now firmly middle-aged, with seven kids who have reached adulthood, we’re still growing up. Knowing that makes it much easier to be at peace with our undeniable flaws, because now I know that when growing and learning ends, that is death.  

In life, all human processes are in flux. Nothing that matters is static. Learning, love, trust, dependence, guilt, pride, memory, attachment, you name it, all of these states of being are constantly shifting, developing, waxing and waning, transforming. This is normal, and isn’t supposed to have an expiration date of 18 years.  

I know this because my relationship with my parents is still a work in progress, and they are both quite dead. I’m still learning new things about them, some that make me furious, some that make me groan with pity. I’m revisiting what I already knew, and I’m still moulding and kneading the memories I have of being in their care.  

I’m still working on that strange, comic balancing routine of trying to give my kids what my parents gave me, but also spare my kids what my parents did to me, all while missing them, all while breathing a little sigh of relief that they are gone.  

The years my kids spent under our roof didn’t feel like they were flying by at the time, but still, they flew. The time of actively raising your kids is very, very brief. Whether that idea brings you panic or relief, here’s a thought I return to again and again:  

Most of your relationship with your children happens when they are adults.  … Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.  

Photo by irelyn via Flickr (Creative Commons)

 

Motherhood turns you into a fountain that flows and flows. Then it shows you that you will run out.

I put the baby down in her seat on the other side of the bathroom door, and she wailed and screamed, wailed and screamed. I remember thinking: What has happened to me. Too exhausted to even put a question mark at the end of that thought. I had just come home from the hospital after giving birth to my first child.

I stood in the shower, looked down and did not recognize my body. It was not just that it did not look like me; it didn’t look like any human person I had seen before. I could not make sense of the shape my body made. Milk ran down my belly and blood ran down my thighs, and through the door, the baby wailed and screamed because I had put her down. What had happened to me.

Now several of my 10 children are adults, and I still don’t know exactly what has happened to me.

Several years ago, fitness guru Jillian Michaels caused a minor spasm in mommy media by saying she would never get pregnant because she could not face ruining her body that way. It eventually emerged that she had not said that, exactly, and her thoughts about pregnancy and her body were more complex and personal than an inflammatory soundbite. But regardless of the details, she had expressed something more honestly than many women are willing to do: She knew that giving birth would disrupt something about herself irrevocably, and it was not a disruption she was willing to endure. Better to find this out about yourself before you get pregnant than after, I thought.

Here is what I have learned since then: Surrendering bodily vanity is only the beginning of what happens to you when you become a mother. First, motherhood turns you into a fountain that flows and flows. Then it shows you that you will run out.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Image from Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons

10 gifts you ought to give your teenagers

As our kids get older, we find it harder and harder to choose gifts for them, now that we can no longer just scan the toy aisle and pick out something neat and colorful. We ask for wish lists, and on them are items that, not only do I not understand why someone would want them, I don’t even completely know what they are.

But I do know how to give older kids the intangible things they need on the 363 days of the year, when it’s not their birthday or Christmas (and not a single one of them needs a charging cable). These are things that may or may not delight them when they receive them, but may stay with them and help them for the rest of their lives.

  1. Being needed. Let them feel the feeling of being important to another human being. This can happen automatically in large families, but even there, some kids are good at escaping responsibility. But understanding that we are responsible for other people is a fundamental part of being human, and kids should learn it early. Some families overdo this, and turn kids, especially girls, into mini parents. This is unjust, and will lead to resentment and burnout. But if your child tends to feel that the world is here to serve him, that needs correcting. All kids should be in charge of something important, even if it’s small.2. The gift of being listened to, even if it’s something you don’t personally care about, because you care about your kid. Let them know more than you about something, and be really interested to hear all about it. Teenagers can come across as arrogant know-it-alls, but this, like so many unpleasant teen traits, often stems from insecurity. They desperately want to prove they’re smart and well-informed and interesting and worthy of attention. So sometimes step back and let them show their stuff, and compliment them on how well they know their topic. They may act like they don’t care, but they probably care very much, and will be very pleased to know they’ve impressed you. More importantly, if you are in the habit of listening to them chatter about inconsequential stuff, they are more likely to come to you with stuff that does matter.
  2. The gift of earning stuff they want. It can be tempting to give teenagers everything they think they need to make them happy, because you want them to be happy and you want them to be happy with you. But you’ll be giving them a much more long-lasting gift if you help them figure out how to do some work to earn some money to get the thing. This will also help them become more discerning about just how badly they want or need some item.
  3. The gift of getting away with things. Sometimes, let stuff ride. Just don’t notice it. It will be easier on all of you if you just pretend you don’t hear that tone of voice, didn’t notice that mess, aren’t aware of that screw-up, don’t care about that bad habit. It’s okay to have personal limits about what you’ll put up with, but make sure you’re not constantly correcting every last little thing. Prioritize, and save your correcting energy for things that really need it.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

 

Image by Luisella Planeta Leoni from Pixabay

Humility in parenting can help heal the past

My brother is a therapist, and he says his clients don’t talk much about being hurt by their parents.

Okay, that’s not true. Let me back up.

When I first started seeing a therapist, I had a lot to say about the things my parents had done wrong. I was doing so many things differently, and better than my parents had. I also had a lot to say about the things I had done wrong AS a parent, and how afraid I was that my kids would be justifiably angry at me for all the ways I had screwed up.

It’s a strange place to be in: Simultaneously recognizing just how wrong your parents were, and being honest about how much it hurt you, and recognizing just how wrong you often are yourself, and being honest about how much it hurts your kids. How do you even live that way? How do you move forward?

In my less fraught moments, I had to admit that, for all the stupid and awful things they did, my parents had certainly done better than their parents — and it was also likely that my grandparents had done better than their parents. I floated the idea that, if things kept up on this trajectory, and every generation improved on the previous one, then within a few decades, we’d be a race of gods. I’ll have to get back to you about how that works out.

The pattern is a real one, though — up to a point. We see what our parents have done wrong, and we don’t make that mistake. No, instead we invent brand new mistakes to make instead. We would hate for our kids to miss out on all the delicious angst and resentment that should come along with childhood, so we make sure we come up with something for them to correct when they have kids of their own.

I’ve thought about it a lot, and there is a real answer to the question “How do you live that way?” — that is, there is a way to live with yourself when you’re simultaneously aware of how much your parents did wrong, and how much you’re doing wrong yourself.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay