A year ago, when my son turned 18, I jotted down the first 9 things I had learned since becoming a mom in January of 2005, promising to give you the other 9 soon after. But then I sat on it because the second half of raising kids to adulthood is just that: you’re no longer raising a child — from age ten on, you’re raising an adult.
As I jotted down some ideas and parked them in drafts here, I very quickly learned that I would need his 18th year for perspective. I don’t think I’ve ever missed mom blogs more than this past year of bearing witness to the awkward, painful, beautiful transition into his adulthood.
Remember the bleary-eyed, oxytocin-fuelled wonder and bewilderment of early motherhood? I can see myself there when I close my eyes and conjure a vignette or a montage:
Sitting on the couch, pinned down under a sleeping infant, in complete awe, wondering if I would ever bore of staring at his perfect face and sniffing his milky head.
Sitting on the couch, pinned down under a sleeping infant, a mix of boredom (we didn’t have streaming!!) and utter panic that I was no longer who I thought I was. How could I — a complete and utter hot mess — be responsible for keeping this little eating, sleeping, crying, and shitting mess of an angel alive??
Opening the door to his room to find him bouncing up and down in his crib with excitement at my appearance.
Making him giggle with tickles and hugs and zerberts for hours.
Connecting with my own inner child through observing him experience the world.
Having a child opened up my whole world. Raising an adult has broken me wide open. All of it was full of wonder, gratitude, awe, and complete terror at the not knowing, the uncertainty and the lack of control over so much of it. But here we are. I live with a man again, but this time, he’s my son. Not gonna lie; it’s weird. It’s also beautiful.
So, in honour of that, here are 9 more things I’ve learned about parenting, but this time, I’ll focus on the second half of the gig.
Avoid traumatizing them, but teach them resilience.
Oof, this point could be an entire book (working on it!). So many Gen Xers parented intensely, and I don’t think millennial parents faired better off. At some point, parenting became a sort of competitive sport. As the first generation to raise kids with the internet at our fingertips, it was just SO easy to feed into our anxieties. In my neuroscience and cognitive behaviour studies, I’ve learned that our brains seek information that validates what we already believe. And as a parent, I was convinced I was doing it wrong. My own trauma response of hypervigilance meant I was constantly reading and researching. I didn’t want my kids to experience trauma like I had as a child. What could I do to prevent this?
Well, I could not hit them as a disciplinary tool, for one. That cycle got broken, and I’m proud of that. But the cycle of scaring the crap out of them as a tool to keep them from risky behaviour? I didn’t see then that doing this was a) me passing on my trauma to them and b) that I was doing it to protect myself from fear and discomfort more than to protect them.
An entire generation tried to be perfect parents, even while outwardly we tried to embrace that we were hot messes. We tried to keep our kids from harm in a very safe world (in the West in particular), and tried to avoid our children experiencing adversity and pain… the result? A generation of anxious kids who spend a lot of time indoors, on screens, and have difficulty with challenging situations, criticism, rejection, and failing.
I realized this point a bit too late. It occurred to me only as we rebounded from a pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it. Grade 7 and Grade 9 were times when my kids should have been pushing the edges of independence and risk-taking. But in a family of people who had strokes, getting the Covee seemed like the worst possible thing, and I doubled down on my fear-based parenting tactics. I regret this immensely. The subsequent years have been about undoing the damage I caused to assuage my own fears.
So, it goes back to lesson number 3: Take care of yourself first. Go and do the therapy and the work to explore your fears and learn how to calm your own nervous system and triggers. Listen to your kid’s worries without trying to solve or fix them. Follow Dr. Becky on Instagram because she shares amazing tips. Learn how to ask questions rather than provide answers or solutions without being asked for them. Figure out how to help them evaluate why something went wrong, and ask what they might do differently next time — because the number one thing you have to teach them is NOT how to have healthy self-esteem but how to build self-trust, self-healing, and self-acceptance, so they can assess risk with intelligence, take care of themselves when hurt, and forgive themselves when they make a choice or a decision that doesn’t feel great.
OK, this is a lot to digest, so I’ll save the rest for next week. Still tinkering with the book, which is now turning out to be a different book than when I started. I need to go away for a while to write, so if you live in another city and are up for a house swap, let me know.
Happy New Year, friends! (Oh, and if you feel like an alternative to resolutions, I’ve mapped my 10 practices for 2024 here.)
Well done mama. They really teach us, don’t they.