How Should I Feel When My Kids Grow Up?
Parenting is an extremely important job, yet it does not come with protocols to handle the responsibilities that come along with it. There is no mandatory training course to help prepare for a day in the life of being a parent or for the unavoidable challenges that come with parenting. Parents are simply doing their best to support their children.
Parents are human and they still experience their own emotions and have their own needs. Parenting in itself is one of the most emotionally taxing experiences that a human can have. Love and attachment are some of the primary emotional experiences that come with being a parent. Children hold an immeasurable amount of love toward their parents as well. The attachment between a parent and child is a feeling that parents have difficulty describing as it is so deep and unwavering in the early stages of life. This relationship often involves the child wanting to be close with the parent as often as possible, constantly relying on the parent, and being open and proud to share their love toward their parent.
What parents are emotionally unprepared for is the developmental stage in which their child becomes an adolescent. This stage occurs between ages 12 and 18 during which healthy adolescents will begin to explore their own identities often rejecting the closeness that they once displayed toward their parents. In order for parents to provide continuous safety and support, they must be mindful of their own emotional needs. It is important for parents to be able to maintain boundaries with their kids during adolescence to ensure their safety and support their identity exploration at the same time.
It is normal for parents to feel a great sadness and loss at this time. The relationship with their child will forever be different. Parents might even feel anger or resentment toward their child when they start pushing them away. These feelings if unprocessed can fracture the parent child relationship. If big feelings have impacted your relationship with your child, remember that this relationship can be repaired through communication and consistency.
When parents are experiencing the uncomfortable mix of emotions that come with raising an adolescent, it is important to lean into these feelings. Parents should try to understand and validate their emotional experience. Because it is often unexpected to feel this way about raising an adolescent, a lot of parents are not talking to each other about this. Parents should not be afraid to share their feelings with their partners, friends, family, or providers. It is something that other parents of teens can enormously relate to. This is also a time when parents can engage in self- care and perhaps return back to parts of their own identities that were deprioritized when parenting young children. Parenting is about making decisions for the long term even when it hurts in the moment. Kids will come back to their parents after the initial rejection during adolescence. Acknowledging this while experiencing emotional pain and taking care of yourself is one of the many balancing acts of parenting.