If Moms had Blogs

When I was young I used to say that I never wanted kids – ever. I never wanted to have a child who would hate me as much as I felt I hated my Mother.

But of course, you fall in love, get married, have a baby. Marriage ends -- you and baby are together forever. In the early years it is the physical pain – being sliced open and having to heal, never sleeping, never even having time to shower, having to leave the house and sit in a parking lot up the street reading a magazine just to have an hour to yourself without always “doing” for another. The diapers, the baths, the feeding, and holding their hands while they learn to walk. Time is never yours again. Luckily you get paid back in sweet smiles and chubby hands holding yours. Kisses and I love you’s and giggles that make you melt.

As they get older, there are the bake sales and PTO’s, play dates, birthday parties, softball practice, dance classes at the Y, and again it’s all about them and doing for them. Still there are the nights of storytelling and snuggling together on the couch to watch Disney movies as your payback, so it never really seems like work.

Twelve approaches and it’s all about friends and sleepovers and gaggles of girls who are loud and messy, eat you out of house and home. They argue with each other, hurt each other’s feelings, betray each other and you feel each blow to your heart as if it was done to you, not your daughter who is always upset, crying, hurting.

Time keeps passing, now it’s trying to keep them safer than they would keep themselves – curfews, rules, groundings when bad choices are made. Groundings that make you share the house 24 hours a day with someone who is angry with you and is moody and prone to outbursts. They are bored and want to watch tv with you or talk to you because you are the only choice. So, you let them change the channel just to spend time with them. It would easier to let them go and do what they want, but you are doing it for their own good, not your own. More activities to pay for and drive to and watch – cheerleading, field hockey – driving them and their friends everywhere. Again, you put yourself and your life aside for your child.

Then comes the scary stuff – stealing from friends and family – clothes, money, electronic gadgets; shoplifting at the stores for fun, climbing out the bedroom window and driving with friends while parents sleep, drinking, smoking pot, other drugs hopefully not, but you never know. More groundings, privileges taken away. More emotional stuff – romantic relationships, drama, hearts being broken – again you feel it too.

The year of the car and work. Grades are going down, time management becomes an even bigger issue. Friends and fun fill up more and more time. You try to help by contacting teachers, arranging tutors, changing curfews. It doesn’t matter – friends come first. Smoking cigarettes, smoking pot, drinking, skipping school, being suspended – all new things that remind you that 17 years in and your life is still all about them and trying to keep them safe against their will. Arrested. You couldn’t protect them and they got caught, but maybe it will be the turning point. Reality. Consequences. Maybe it will turn things around. Time out of work to pick her up at the local jail, court dates, expulsion hearings. You’re still putting in all the time and effort, but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

She tells you she only lives here because of her friends. If not, she would be 2 hours away with her Dad because you’re too hard to live with – you don’t trust her. You pretty much ruin her life. It’s too much to ask that she realize how hard this has been for you as well, how much you are trying to help her, how much good you want for her life, but it’s out of your control. It hurts that after all these years, all the time, the energy, the physical and emotional pain, all she wants to do is be away from you. I guess that’s what adulthood is about – wanting to live your own life. It’s perfectly normal, and believe me parents look forward to that day as much as you do, but why do the actual words when spoken hurt so much?