When Your Kids Need You for Everything

We hear moms say how hard it is when their kids turn into tweens and teens and although it’s awesome to get some freedom back and to not be needed so much all of the time there is this nagging feeling that something is missing.

For all of these years, I have been on call for meals and comfort. Baths and book reading. I have been the one needed after a hard day or a spiff with a friend. I was run to when he fell and banged his knee or was stung by a bee.

Not to say I am no longer necessary, but the eye rolls and smart-ass comments are too much to bear sometimes. There are the terrible twos and threes and then there are maybe the terrible 12’s and 13’s.

Don’t get me wrong I know I am still needed for years to come, but there is something to acknowledge about the loss that comes when our kids reach adulthood.

Our whole livelihood has been wrapped up in these little beings and then all of a sudden it seems I am left alone with my own hopes, dreams, and desires and that can feel daunting.

I am middle-aged if I’m lucky and feel like time has passed me by. I feel more irrelevant having had kids 10 years apart I am older than some.

I have dreams of travel and success. Dreams of making it big and taking my show on the road. The freedom is now here to do that, but I can’t say I am not a little bit sad that my parenting of littles is over.

When they are small sometimes we think, when will this end, when will I have freedom, and then we get a taste of it and it feels so foreign. It feels so foreign that we don’t know what to do.

I always think it funny that my husband at 49’s mom is always doting over him and making sure he is warm and fed but isn’t that how it is? They are always our babies.

Most of us mothers have put something on hold until our kids were bigger and now here we are. I don’t know about you, but I question my worth. Can I still make it in this big, wide world?

Mothering is something that came innately. I didn’t think it would, but it did and I am so thankful for that. I could use my intuition and my motherly instincts. I could break a cycle and pass on some new healthy habits. I could feel what unconditional love felt like and nurture my own inner child as I learned with my children. I became a teacher after watching my kids enter preschool not believing how much I loved playing with littles.

I loved the Children’s Museums and exploring the beaches and trips. I loved being a part of their childhoods and lives. I feel like a huge chunk of who I am is being ripped away and I might need therapy.

I am an empty nester of one and one is getting his wings to fly. Independence is what we want, right? We’ve helped to raise them up to be independent leaders. We have nurtured their strengths and held them when they cried. We have shown them what it means to be strong, brave, and even sad, we have shown them how to tell their truths.

Now we must let them go out into the world. We have to trust that they will come back when they need us and we can give them a safe place to land. Lord knows this world can be abrasive and we can’t prepare them for everything.

Trusting and believing really have to be where it’s at.

It truly is scary and I won’t deny that.

Middle-aged mothers of teens and college-aged kids unite!