It’s Hard Not to Treat Your Children Like… Children
My ex-husband has a newish job. His shifts are all over the place, sometimes early morning, sometimes well into the evening. His very lovely mother, who is in her mid-80’s and always down to be helpful, will call him in the morning to make sure he’s awake.
Unfortunately she doesn’t really get his schedule. Meaning that she sometimes calls him when he’s only been asleep for a couple of hours.
He told this to me and our daughter the other night over dinner, and I immediately had to cop to doing the same thing to our kid.
She has two jobs, one from 11pm-5am, and another that starts at 4pm. I’m a little better than my well-meaning mother-in-law; I know when she’s been at work all night, but once in a while I’m afraid she’s going to miss getting to her second job.
What can I say? I have threads of anxiety, one of which is around being places on time. Sometimes it gets the better of me.My daughters is a particularly forgiving child, so she never gets mad at me, although I’m sure she’s annoyed. Usually she’s already up, and occasionally her alarm is set to go off about 15 minutes after I’ve pestered her. Honestly, mothers are the worst.
In my own defense, I don’t do this frequently, and usually I manage to stop myself when I’m jonesing to go just check to see if she’s up yet.
I spent many years dragging this kid out of bed. Waking her up for school only to have to drag her from sleep again 10 minutes later. So it’s kind of wired-in to think that she’s going to oversleep.
And here’s one of those things that’s challenging about the changing relationship you have with your adult children: you have to unlearn a whole lot of stuff you spent years learning. Because an eight-year-old and a 25-year-old aren’t the same person with the same habits.
We spend so much time thinking about our kids’ futures, hoping, worrying, wondering. Then the future is suddenly now, and we’re caught off guard. We know the truth, they’re still babies in an unforgiving world!
My daughters and I get along very well, so despite this kid’s desire to live somewhere other than her mother’s house, peace generally reigns in our shared home. As noted, she is patient when I overstep, and I am patient when she reverts to her younger behavior. (Honestly this is mostly forgetting to look into the magic box that is the dishwasher to see if the dishes therein are clean.)
Parents want to take care of their kids! At least the better ones do.
It seems, anecdotally, that when young adults and their parents spar it’s usually because the parents haven’t given their kids enough credit for being adults, or the kids are acting like much younger versions of themselves. (No one does this as well as the SNL clan.)
Which leads to the, “This isn’t a hotel!” refrain.
I happen to really like the adult versions of my kids. Though I’d give up a month of my life for one more day with them as tiny people… Alas, reality.
It’s long been my contention that it’s easier to roll with relationship evolution when you’re a single parent. Partnerless for years, I’ve come to rely on my children to help me keep life rolling along smoothly. It’s helped me view them as people who can get shit done if properly motivated.
Pairs create stasis. It’s hard enough for me to remember that my children are adults; with two parents reconfirming to one another their projections of their kids as younger and less responsible, it’s not hard to see how problems arise.
Of course this is all supposition. Our family works the way it works, and in general I couldn’t be happier about it. So I will resist the temptation to think that I know anything, really, about where my kids should be at any given moment.
And when I’m sure my kid is going to oversleep? I leave the house. I head for the garden or the grocery store or the coffee shop. I get the hell out before I do something ill-advised.
I’m trying to love her like a rock, not a steamroller.