Having toddlers is an exercise in patience, having teenagers is an exercise in tolerance, having adult children is an exercise in understanding. My daughters still need my guidance as they navigate the beginning of their adulthood, but the time they need is different than when they were little, because I can’t do any of it for them. I can only be there to listen. Listening sucks, I’d rather stage a coup.
My advice is futile unless they take it to heart, which is rare. It’s especially distressing for me because I’m an extremely empathetic person, which means I feel other people’s emotion in my core, making it worse because it’s my own children’s pain. My sister mentioned a college psychology teacher who said that parents feel pain during the parts of their children’s lives where they themselves struggled in childhood. That’s not news to me. I’ve been very aware that I want my children to do better than I did at every phase of their lives.
I struggled last September when my youngest was still at loose ends after graduation, even though I myself took a year off after high school. My parents moved to Western Washington the month after I graduated. I got a full time job and my own apartment. I thought I was pretty impressive: a working woman, all of 18, living on my own, until I realized I was the worst cashier in the world. After the Christmas rush, I was laid off. The only one laid off, and not the last to be hired. My youngest experienced a similar “run in” with a cashiering job right after she graduated. Though I saw myself in her conundrum, and there was nothing I could do to make it better, I only focused on her jumping back on the horse.
Her encounter with the real world, or her mother’s reaction to it, seemed to ruin her for good, because she found a position doing contract work transcribing audio from home. Alone. In the dark. At midnight. Like a vampire-hermit-girl. She and her sister did start college in January, but I still felt like she was hiding.
I complained to her sister about it. My oldest became very quiet. I snarked, “What?”
“I think you’re being too hard on her.”
“I was hard on you at that same age. Do you remember?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m calling you out on this. She’s doing fine.”
So I put on my biggest parenting panties, and dug into my youngest’s business. What looked like doom, despair, and agony to me, was not what it was to her. She told me she felt better mentally than she had in years. She was not going to get an outside job, but was upping her commitment to her contract work and applying at the biggest video game conference there is, and though it was only a weekend position, would look great on a resume. She loved her school and was excited for fall classes to start.
I was relieved to know she had things worked out. I understood her tendency to not want to divulge it all to me for fear I would take over. I admit, it’s a valid concern. I’m trying my best not to overrun my introverted daughter with my extroverted mouth.
I shouldn’t be surprised, as she has been preparing me for this day. She didn’t talk until she could speak correctly in full sentences. When she was potty training, she’d sit on the toilet, hold up her hand to stop, and yell, “Don’t say yay!” She started eating normal food when she was darn good and ready. She’s always taken her own road in her own time.
Maybe vampire-hermit-girl is my new superhero.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh,” or twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.
