When your children need you less

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You experience a decade of being the absolute rock for your child.  They rely on you for food, shelter, nappy changing, cleanliness, getting where they need to go, when they need to go there.  You play with them, dry their tears when they fall, patch them up and help them get back on track.  You get completely used to thinking for them as well as you.  Your diary is full of their activities (not so much your own).  Life, if you also have a paid job, becomes an endless round of time management genius.  From meetings, to school pickups... on and on it goes.  It's thrilling, but exhausting.

During this time you occasionally wish they didn't need you so much.  Their call of 'muuummmm', starts to become more grating and less cute.  They seem to lose things constantly, and require your input so much that you rarely get to drink a cup of tea whilst it's hot, nor go to the toilet uninterrupted.

Then suddenly, all the hard work you've done to teach them how to great dressed, use a knife and fork, and to clean up after themselves, starts to pay off.  They hit secondary school and even if you've not managed to show them how to do much cooking, they are now doing it in school anyway.  They can now make their own lunches (and you encourage it). Suddenly, they need you less.

It's a jarring experience.  You've spent over a decade now preparing this child to become independent.  They are fast approaching adult hood.  The teen years will present a challenge in itself, but it won't be about the basics anymore.  They are starting to not need you.

I must admit I'm finding this stage difficult.  Some days I'm delighted that my girls are now in their mid-teens and can feed themselves, get themselves to school, self-motivate and get on with homework, clean their rooms and tidy (sometimes!) up after themselves.  But some days I'm sat, with my hot cup of tea, whilst they occupy themselves in their rooms, wondering what my role is now, and feeling confused. 

It's no longer all-encompassing.  But you've spent over a decade being an all encompassed mother.  How do you find yourself again?

I look around and realize I haven't been great at socializing, so I don't have a massive friend group.  Life has been so hectic that, now it's calming down, I'm not sure what to do with the time.  And ironically we've reached that stage just when we hit a pandemic, with lockdowns and restrictions meaning we've not been able to use this new found freedom anyway!  I opted to start learning piano.  It's something I've always wanted to do, so why not.  And I'm writing here again.  Apologies for my absence.

I'm writing this to reassure those of you that are feeling a bit lost as your children hit mid-teens.  Don't worry.  As children hit their teens they need a different kind of mothering.  Now it's about being there when they need you.  Allow them to try out their independence, but be there, in the background, to calmly step in when the pancakes burn, or they experience their first heartbreak.  The teens (for us so far anyway) seem to be more about emotional development.  Girls and boys have hormones flying round like crazy.  They'll experience rapid changes in emotion, and not know how to handle it.  Girls definitely can find themselves suddenly bursting into tears for no apparent reason.  Yes. that's normal.  

I'm going to try and be their comfort blanket.  Their rock.  Their go to place when it gets overwhelming.  I'm also going to enjoy the change, and spend my newly free time a bit differently. 

How are you changing your approach as your children hit secondary age?  What's it feel like?  Do you miss them needing you all the time?  Or are you finding it difficult to encourage independence?