I write this the day after I took daughter Francesca back to college, and I miss her. I know I’m not the only sad parent. My good friend sent her son to kindergarten last week and she’s still crying.
September is a time of beginnings and endings, which are not coincidentally the same thing; the beginning of middle school for your kid will finalize the ending of elementary school. Any movement your child makes toward something will be a movement away from you. And though we’ve all heard that dumb roots-and-wings speech, it still hurts.
You’re happy for your kid, but sad for yourself.
And none of your sad feelings are supposed to show. You don’t want to burden your child, especially when she’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to, which is growing up. So you keep the sadness inside. Your heart says, Ouch, but your face says, Yay! It’s the terrible wrench of parenting, which specializes in the bittersweet.
Oddly, I don’t think we allow ourselves to acknowledge this sadness, even among us parents. I know a mother who says she feels silly because she misses her kid, away at college. We’re all pretending we’re too-cool-for-school, about school.
Instead, let’s clarify things right now: It’s okay to miss your kid. A lot.
In fact, it’s essential to miss your kid a lot. If you miss your kid a lot, it’s proof that you love them. That you’re involved with them. That in the short time they spent in your care, you got to know them well. After all, you miss a lot of things that aren’t as important, right? For example, I miss carbs.
Missing your kid is proof that you’re a good parent, despite the fact that the current vogue is to put down good parents. I’ve seen us called the “helicopter parents,” always hovering over our children, and I’ve read articles putting down children who remain connected to their parents by cell phone and email, calling those kids the “tethered generation.”
Boy, does that burn me up.
It’s good to be a helicopter parent. It’s better to be a helicopter parent than to be Britney Spears. Likewise, it’s good for kids to stay connected to their parents. It’s better to be a tethered kid than Lindsay Lohan.
This is why I love Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They have a passel of kids and they’ve been married fifteen minutes. Wait, they’re not married, but never mind. All I know is that in every photo I see of them, they’re with their kids, doing kid things. Not only do they spend time with their kids, they wear their kids. They’re holding at least two children at all times; one is always strapped on their front in a Snugli and the other is draped around a shoulder like a noisy handbag.
Brad and Angelina look like good parents to me. I don’t sweat that they’re not married. I don’t think you need a marriage to raise a kid. Families come in all shapes and sizes. I became a single parent when my daughter was an infant, and I remember when someone at school told her she was an “only child.” She came home and asked me, “Does that mean you’re an ‘only mom?’ ”
Answer: Yes.
I don’t think it takes a village to raise a child. On the contrary, I think it takes one person who loves the child and places that child’s needs and interests above his own, for a good, long time. Like decades. And if you’ve done that for a child, it stands to reason that you’re going to miss them when they go, even if you gave them the roots and wings required by Hallmark cards.
So what do you do about this sadness you feel?
Here’s how I think about it, and it helps:
Recognize that your child is just traveling through. You don’t own your child. You’re just her caretaker for a very long time, because you willed her into existence. Even so, her existence is separate from yours. It’s easy to forget this, especially if you’re a good parent, because you can get so close to your child that your interests are often perfectly aligned. You remember times when you had to fight for your child, whether it was to get her a doctor’s appointment in a busy flu season or to score her the last Furby, back when every kid wanted a Furby.
But don’t be fooled.
You and your child are different people, and your child is traveling through your life, just as you’re traveling through hers. All of us are traveling through this life, and though our paths overlap for a time, like routes on a highway map, eventually we all separate, one from the other.
And I’m not talking about college here.
Think about traveling through, and you’ll be able to let your kid go. It’s just like she took the business route and you took the local. You might end up in the same place again, and it doesn’t mean she won’t come back, God knows.
And you can always hold the cats hostage.