It was Saturday night and I was at a friend’s house when my phone started buzzing. If you’ve spent any time with me, then you know I’m notorious for never hearing my phone. A lot of time it’s because I never have it with me. It’s in another room, in my purse, lying somewhere around the house, anywhere and everywhere but in my possession. Other times, I have forgotten to take my phone off airplane mode. Or it’s still on silent. Simply put, more often than not, I’m preoccupied with something other than my phone. But sometimes there are those rare occasions when I do hear it. This was one of those times. And it could be because it was past 10:30 at night and getting texts that late generally aren’t a good thing.
I grab my phone. It was my mother. She was wondering if I was coming home or spending the night at my friend’s house. And even though it was a text, it still dripped with sarcasm.
You may be thinking I’m recounting a story from my younger days, perhaps when I was a teenager. You’d be wrong. There was no such thing as a smart phone when I was a teenager. This incident took place recently.
When does parenting stop
As a grown woman with three ‘almost’ adult children of my own, it boggles my mind that my mother continues to parent me. A lot of my friends and family also find themselves in this predicament: Adult children still being parented by their parents.
Don’t get me wrong, I am beyond grateful that I have parents who still love and care about me to be involved in my life. At the same time, I wonder when will the parenting be done. I am an adult after all. I’ve managed to live on my own for several decades AND raise three children of my own. When will I be ‘adult’ enough not to be parented?
My beliefs about parenting
When I was a teenager, I erroneously believed once I left the nest, the parenting would be done. But that didn’t happen. Not even marriage, distance or having ‘almost’ adult children have earned me the right to be unparented.
Younger me had vowed against ‘perpetual parenting’, there was no way she would be like that. If ever she had kids, once they were in college, she would dust her hands free of all parental duties. Her kids would be allowed to make their own decisions and live their lives because they were officially young adults at that point.
My reality
Well…younger me was naive. It’s hard to unparent. The parental mindset doesn’t really have an off switch, which defeats the whole purpose of parenting. I mean, I worked hard to teach my children to become responsible, law-abiding citizens. I’ve been preparing them to leave my nest and build nests of their own. This is what I’ve been training them for their whole lives. And yet now they’re ‘almost’ adults, I find it hard not to dispense unsolicited parental advice. It could be because I don’t see them as full-fledged, tax-paying adults yet. They’re still in college. And – according to our tax forms – still technically dependents. Or ‘almost’ adults.
Well, I was called out by my ‘almost’ adult daughter that I needed to step back on the parenting because she believes she’s an adult and not an ‘almost’ adult. The nerve! How dare she challenge my categorization system!
Learning to unparent
Truth be told, I didn’t even know I was parenting her. I’ve been in this mindset for such a long time, it’s second nature. And having an adult son with a disability kind of solidified that mentality. But in this new season of my life, two of my three kids don’t need a parent anymore. Instead, they need a cheerleader, a mentor, and an occasional therapist. So I’m working on learning to unparent and embrace my new normal. But the parenting mentality runs deep in my family and it’s hard to undo. Thankfully, if my mother is still learning how to unparent, I’ve got plenty of time. My kids haven’t even left the nest yet.