Get Off My Path – How To Become “Friends” With Your Adult Kids
So you have a baby, or two, or more … and suddenly you’ve gained a new title, Mom. A title you had wondered about most of your life, and now it’s yours. You learn that there is a love beyond anything you could have imagined. Sure, you love your spouse, your parents, your siblings, and your friends, but not like this. These little people become your whole world, and you suddenly understand what they mean when they say unconditional love.
Over the next 20 years, give or take, you raise your kids to the best of your ability. You cook for them, bathe them, dress them, care for them, teach them, cry with them, sleep with them, pray with them, protect them, listen to them, and anything else that comes with Mom territory. If you’re like me, you may even go beyond this. Oh, not in that helicopter Mom sort of way, but in the way that you took your responsibility seriously and hoped to shield them from pain and disappointment in their lives. You feel the need to make their life as good and as free from heartbreak as possible. But I digress, so let’s move on.
Here’s the part that no one tells you. Once you’ve done your job and raised these little people into the most amazing human beings, you need to stop “mothering” (I don’t think that’s a word, but I’ll use it for this purpose). My daughter had given me lots of little signs in this regard, some of them not even so subtle, but I didn’t get it. She was the youngest of my two kids and in her 20’s. My awakening came via a conversation (well, text actually) when my older child, my son in his early 30’s, specifically called me out on a specific text. I had texted to remind him of something that, frankly, he already knew and had already done. At that point, he let me know that my text wasn’t necessary … and then a few minutes later came another one about how the texts I would send randomly about Grandpa and Grandma’s birthdays, the snowstorm moving in, etc. also weren’t necessary. He was being kind, but he was making his point.
A light bulb came on. My kids, although they loved me, held a certain amount of resentment because of the “mothering” I continued to do. Who knew there was a change in the job description I had signed up for and had loved so much? Not me. But I do know this. Many of you are doing the same thing … albeit with all the best intentions. I know this because my generation is a product of our upbringing. We repeated what we saw, so it must be right, right? Wrong. Not for this new generation. The good news is that I’m also here to tell you that this can be fixed! What I needed to understand and accept was that I had done my job (which I guess is why the job description changed?). Instead of feeling bad that I had been called out, I turned it around and accepted and appreciated the fact that my kids did not need me in the same way as they once did. They had become good people who now displayed all of what they had been taught and had headed off on their own path, well-adjusted adults some might say. I gathered my thoughts, called my kids, and our conversation went something like this:
“Hey you guys, I finally get it. You will always need me, and I will always be here. But you don’t need a mother in the same sense as you did in the past. I did my job, and you are now off on your own path. And I’m on mine. Our paths have some commonalities, yet they are different. This is how life works, and I see that now. So, if I forget and slip into old habits, you need to remind me and simply say ‘get off my path’!”
And here is the key: stop thinking so much like a mother, and instead think more like their friend … and allow them to think of you the same way. Keeping ‘mother’ at the forefront of the equation leaves everyone feeling like there is a hierarchy (you are over them, and they report to you). When you eliminate this pecking order and allow yourself, and them, to think like a friend, you have created an even playing field … and the lines of communication flow much differently. Much better. Even great.
Our relationship has become exactly what it should be when they are adults. We are great friends. They now often call me before I call them. They know I’m here if and when they need me in the true sense of the ‘Mom’ word. And every once in a while, they tell me to get off their path … and we laugh!