“When they’re little, they sit on your lap; when they’re big, they sit on your heart”
I had always cherished the thought that your kids are an integral part of your life when they are little but when they are older and take flight from the nest, your mothering instincts can take a well earned rest. After all, with the better part of two decades dealing with kindy and school drop-offs, cheering on the sidelines for the endless footy, soccer, hockey and cricket matches, cooking and serving up countless meals, helping with homework and doing the bed time rituals, tolerating their hormonal changes through their teen years and enduring the agonising periods of decision making regarding future study directions; surely at some point all this worrying and taking care of your offsprings will come to an end? As a parent, you think that the older your children get, the easier life will get. But how wrong I was. No matter how old they are, you constantly think about what they are doing. Are they all right for money? Do they have enough warm clothes? Are they managing with uni life? Are they eating well? Do they have friends to hang out with?
My soon-to-be 25 year-old son left home three years ago to study and work in Sydney. My almost-23 year old son graduated from uni and is now in Canada working on the ski fields as he enjoys his rites of passage overseas experience(and who has no definite plans for returning home). My 18 year old daughter (thank goodness for a laatlammetjie) still lives at home and is studying at university. They are all fully functioning adults but not a day goes past without you thinking and hoping that all is well with them.
When kids are little and they are stressed about things not quite going their way, as a parent you quickly jump in and fix it for them. Irrespective of the short notice, you pounce in and help with their school homework or project. You scoop them up and kiss them when they hurt themselves, when their bestie is being mean to them at school, you arrange a play date with another friend, you sit with them and share their anxiety through their exam stress bringing them warm cups of hot chocolate (for some reason my kids don’t drink tea or coffee), when they had a bad game at footy, you reassure them the referee mucked up the match and there is no situation big enough, that you as a mum cannot smooth over with your proverbial magical mum’s wand. As long as you hugged them and served up good, comforting food, everything was going to be okay. Your home was a safe haven where they felt protected, secure and immensely loved from all the bad stuff that was whipping up a frenetic storm outside.
The bumpy road of life does not straighten out when they are older; it still exists but you can’t jump right in like you used to. You have to sit in the sidelines and watch and wait with bated breath for the blimp to sort itself out. The problems are still there but these take on other guises. They stress about submitting uni assignments by the deadline, they are struggling to muster the cost for the concert they wish to attend in another city, they are disenchanted about the shifts they get for their part-time jobs, some of their friends don’t hang out with them as much as they used to as they are now courting seriously, should they continue with their electives at uni at should they branch out into a new direction of study and the list goes on.
My eldest son suffered a particularly bad year last year where he was hospitalised for almost a month and this had a domino effect on his study semester that he couldn’t complete, he couldn’t work part-time because he was recuperating and he was generally so down because of the traumatic effects of his illness. As a mother you feel so helpless when your adult children are hurting because you can’t jump in like you used to when they were little and make everything okay. You watch in agony from a distance and you feel their raw pain and there’s nothing you can do physically to take away their suffering. You know they still need you like crazy but you discover the help you were learning to give out for the past 20 years or so, does not cut the mustard now. For the first time you feel helpless as a parent, because the pains and disappointments they are experiencing in adulthood are clearly out of reach of your helpful intervention. The kiss, the cuddle or the bear hug somehow lost its remediating powers.
However, just as they proved as children, they are a resilient bunch. Your heart ache with theirs when they call and tell you they are down in the dumps when this or that happened and while you are still languishing about strategies to advise them on how to deal with that particular obstacle, they have moved away and are in the clouds a few days later talking ten to a dozen about this new thing that has taken precedence in their life.
What I have come to realise is that this new adult phase of their lives, offers us as parents another opportunity to feel awed by our children’s beauty and their uniqueness. It is time for us as parents to exercise a balance between reaching out and helping but at the same time giving them the opportunity to deal with their problems so that it can build their resilience which would allow them to take their rightful place in this world as responsible adults.
While my kids were growing up, I have never been a controlling parent. There were not many rules in our house about study time or bed time or meal times ( thankfully we did not have to deal with screen time then). I had no illusion about me as a parent being in complete control. Instead I allowed them to make mistakes and face the consequences of their decisions but always lurking in the shadows to lend a supportive hand if they reached out. In this way I suppose I trained them to make the right choices even when I was not around. The reality is they get to choose and forge their own life paths and the hard yards we have put in as parents when they were little is the moral compass that gives direction to their lives now.
Being a parent is one of the hardest roles you take on but what a superb pay-off it offers in the form of according you the gift of unconditional and selfless love that you would have not otherwise discovered. There is some truth in what I read somewhere that you’ll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and - in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love - you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.
Here’s wishing that if you have kids far away, your smile will light up your face when you reach out to answer their call.
Have an exceptionally, fantastic week, folks, as we cruise along on the new month of love.
No comments:
Post a Comment