A GIFT FOR MY TEEN
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 131.
Hello, my friends. I am feeling nostalgic today. We're days away from learning if my son was accepted to the college where he applied early decision.
As much as I'm nervous and hopeful for a positive outcome, I also know in my heart that no matter what happens, my son's going to go to an amazing school. The only question in my mind is whether he'll know that school in a few days or a few months. Even as I say this, it sounds like wishful thinking, telling myself that everything's going to turn out okay, but meanwhile freaking out inside at the thought of my son being devastated by the news if it's not positive.
If it's a no, my son will be very disappointed. How can you not be? You put so much effort into striving for a big goal and if the outcome isn't what you'd hoped it would be, that's a big letdown. How often have our kids had to put themselves up to this level of possible and maybe even likely rejection? Sure, there have been times where they haven't been selected for the team or the school play.
Maybe they tried out for some honor or competed in something and lost or didn't win the award. Our kids have definitely faced disappointments along the way. But the way the college admission process works today, the odds of disappointment far outweigh the odds of success.
You can have the mindset that everything works out in the long run and that every kid ends up where they're meant to be, which is ultimately a hundred percent true. Life goes on. But this perspective doesn't take the harsh sting of disappointment away in these moments.
As parents, we try so hard to set our kids up for success. Each of us might define success very differently depending on our values and expectations for our kids. As a base case, we want our kids to be able to thrive independently, to find a job, to be happy.
But at this time in life, with a senior in high school, it can feel like success is pretty narrowly defined by getting into college. Does that mean they'll be able to thrive independently? That they'll be happy? Believe me, I've coached plenty of moms who've kids have finished college and they're still worried about their child being successful in supporting themselves, still anxious that they won't find happiness. We want our kids to be safe, happy, and successful.
And we, as moms, feel responsible to help them achieve all of this. I wouldn't want it any other way. It is such a gift and a privilege to have had the opportunity to bring this life into the world, to feel the deep purpose of raising these children, guiding them, seeing them turn into these unique individuals.
Do you ever look at your kid, some of the mannerisms or habits, and you think to yourself, they've always been this way? From the moment my oldest came into the world, he was intense. He got frustrated easily. He was difficult to put down to sleep.
My youngest, on the other hand, we have a picture of him in the light box when he was an infant because he had jauntus. He was wearing the light goggles and it looked honestly like he was relaxing in a tanning bed, cool as a cucumber. That kid has always been go with the flow, easy to entertain, quick to laugh.
Both of my boys have grown into young men who are intense in their own way, but there are still aspects of their personality today where I can see in them, those infants, see what I think of as the essence of who they are, both beautiful and unique. What an incredible gift for me to have this perspective, this inside access to the development of a human being. Being on the brink of learning where my baby will go to college has me reflecting quite a bit on this journey of motherhood.
Parts of it felt interminable, and yet now looking back it's like it happened so quickly. The house is already quieter as my youngest spends more time out with friends and his girlfriend, or up in his room studying and writing college applications. Everything is exactly as it should be, and yet my heart wants to hold on.
It doesn't want things to change. We all experience this transition in different ways. Sometimes it's feeling like we're losing the purpose of motherhood that stings the most.
We can struggle with the loss of the beautiful day-to-day connections we get to have with our teens when they're still living at home. Or if you have a challenging relationship with your teen, getting them out of the house can be a relief. It's hard not to be impacted by the moods of a teen.
Policing their behavior if they like to push boundaries is exhausting. If I'm honest, I can relate to all of this, and maybe you can too. Even when we have challenges with our kids, we love them.
We want to feel connected to them. Those memories of them clinging to us as infants and toddlers, the easy hugs and kisses, the open hearts, the shared secrets and cuddles. Sometimes it doesn't seem possible that I used to get nightly snuggles from these two humans who are both now six feet tall.
It strikes me looking back at how my boys have been a gift to me for almost 20 years. When you really think about it, our kids didn't ask to be born. They had no say in who their would be.
Whether we gave birth to them or adopted them, we chose to be parents to our kids. We chose how to raise them, the values that we tried to instill in them. And as much as we've sacrificed so much to raise these human beings, it's been our choice.
And think about the impact of that. First, having a child. Obviously, you have to invest a lot of effort in the early years, just keeping them alive, feeding them, keeping them out of danger.
That work is physical and can be exhausting. But assuming we accept the challenge, we feel a sense of purpose and important responsibility. We often think that our kids give us purpose, but in reality, we've chosen that purpose.
We've created that feeling of purpose. We could have abdicated that responsibility. Many moms do.
If you're listening to a podcast about teens, I'm guessing you're not one of them. So consider how it might be true that you chose and created the feeling of purpose you've felt as you've raised your kids. Of course, your children were the object of that purpose.
But that feeling, that sense of responsibility is something you chose. And let's face it, it's felt good. Important.
I've had plenty of jobs before in my life, but none have felt as meaningful and as important as raising my boys. This feeling is a gift. This role has given me.
On top of the purpose, I've felt and continue to feel such immeasurable love when I think about my boys. I have never loved anyone so deeply and urgently as I love my boys. It's the kind of love where I would gladly sacrifice anything to support them.
Although you could certainly point to plenty of biological instincts that have created these deep connections with our offspring, the love that we feel for our kids is still a choice. Sure, it was easy when they were happy toddlers, but when the road has gotten tough, you've chosen love again and again. At this point, it's a deeply ingrained habit, a feeling that you may even take for granted.
Like, of course, I love my kids, but still, it's a choice. So purpose. Love.
Let's talk about connection. That's another gift of motherhood. Feeling connected to these humans.
Those moments when we have really connected with our kids. It's like heroin. It's so addicting.
I have imprinted on my heart quiet moments nursing my boys. Hilarious bath times. Snuggles while reading Goodnight Moon.
Holding hands in public. More snuggles. The joy on their face when I would pick them up from preschool.
The times as they got older when they would share their heart, their fears, their hopes, and their dreams. We've experienced these moments and notwithstanding any of the struggles and the frustrations along the way, we've been so deeply grateful for these moments. The moments that have made every second of the struggle worth it.
It's so tempting to give all the credit to our kids for these beautiful feelings of connection, love, and purpose. And even more so, it's easy to blame them when these feelings are more difficult to capture as they become teens. Some of our kids pull away from us and we feel a loss of that connection.
Maybe our kids struggle in life in various ways and our sense of purpose gets tested. You can wonder how to support your teen if you're doing the right thing. You can feel like you're failing at your purpose or blame yourself for what you must have done wrong in the past.
Then of course when they leave the nest it can feel like we have to let go of our purpose and the connection we get to feel when we're with them. We tell ourselves that we love our kids no matter what, but then connection and purpose, or I should say confidence in our purpose, those can fall by the wayside pretty quickly. It's been a few years now since I almost lost my son.
He was in a relationship with someone who almost manipulated him into cutting ties with his family. I wish I was exaggerating. I share this because I know personally how deeply it can hurt when your child pulls away.
I was angry and hurt. I blamed my son. I blame myself.
I definitely blame the girlfriend. Everything I had ever dreamed up for my son felt like it was in jeopardy. He seemed willing to give all of it away, to throw it away, throw his relationship with me, with his family away.
It was a really dark time for our family. I was devastated to be losing the close connection I thought I had with my son. My advice, my guidance, my role as a mom was rejected.
In fact I thought I had been a champion for my son, supporting his ambitious dreams, but my behavior was reflected back to me as controlling. I felt misunderstood and rejected, unappreciated, and even ashamed. How could I have messed this up so badly? So in an effort to reconnect with my son, I tried to explain to him that he was wrong.
In retrospect it seemed so clear why this didn't work. But at the time I was consumed by the goal of needing him to see. I needed him to see that I loved him and had only been trying to support him.
I wanted him to see that the relationship he was in wasn't healthy. I wanted him to forgive me. I wanted him to agree with me.
In my mind I had an expectation of what our connection should look like and reality wasn't meeting my expectations at all. I was losing my son. But consider this.
What I was really doing was making my feelings of connection and purpose contingent on my son doing what I wanted him to do. Even as I say this I feel ashamed, but the truth is we all do this. We tell ourselves we love our kids unconditionally, but feeling connected, feeling confident in our purpose, we only get to feel those things when our kids are meeting our expectations.
Here's some examples. If your teen smiles when they see you, if they spend the right amount of time with you, maybe open up to you once in a while, tell you they love you, then you get to feel connected. But then they don't smile that much, seem to avoid spending time with you, don't open up to you, or just leave for college and get busy living their lives.
You spend more time alone in an empty home. Then you feel disconnected. It makes perfect sense, and yet you tell yourself that you love them no matter what.
So why can't you feel connected to them no matter what they do? Isn't love related to feeling connected? When my son was involved in that relationship, I had to face the possibility that I was making my love conditional. How could I tell myself that I love my son no matter what and totally reject his point of view and his choices? Was I really willing to love my son unconditionally? Let's talk about purpose. If your child does what you think they should do, wakes up on time, drives safely, applies themselves in school, keeps their room clean, does their chores, you get to feel like you're doing a good job as a mom.
You get to feel confident and successful in your purpose. But if they refuse to wake up for school on time, consistently exceed the speed limit, or miss curfew, don't try in school and leave their room a mess, well, it feels like then we don't get to feel confident in our purpose, right? Like, what am I doing wrong that I can't get my kid to be responsible? Or your kid leaves for college and then you have to hang up your hat in the purpose department. Say goodbye to this meaningful role.
Again, is it true that our purpose is so conditional on our kid's behavior and even their proximity to us? I reached a point where I realized that everything I was doing to reconnect with my son was failing. That whatever my purpose as a mom, I was failing at that too. It was clear that there was nothing I could do to change my son's choices or behavior.
I was literally left with only two options. Accept where I was, accept his choices, or continue to feel hurt, disconnected, and angry, ultimately choosing to cut myself off from my son. But I realized even then that no matter how much I hurt, I refused to cut off my love for my son.
And so I had to make a choice. Keep feeling terrible or accept and love my son for exactly who he was in that moment. As I think about it now, I was choosing unconditional love, unconditional connection with my son, and unconditional purpose.
At the time, I even told myself that if my son woke up at 40 years old and wanted to reconnect with me, even 20 years later, I would be here waiting for him. I literally made the decision that no matter what he chose, I was going to stay connected to him. And even though I still grieved the loss of what I wished our relationship would be, something beautiful opened up in me because I realized how true it was that my love and connection was a choice I got to make.
I had been spending so much time and energy making my son's choices about me that because he was spending time with his girlfriend and doing things that made me think he was walking away from the family, the fact is that his choices were about him. He was in love. That definitely didn't look like what I wanted it to.
To me, it didn't seem like a healthy kind of love. But here I was trying to take his love away from him, telling him it was wrong. Is that what unconditional love looks like? From that moment on, I made the decision that I would love my son and choose to feel connected to him no matter what he did.
I'm not saying it was easy. It took conscious intention, a re-deciding every time I interacted with him. But every time I chose love, I chose to believe that I could be connected to my son no matter what he chose.
Remember when our kids were infants, before they could smile? Those days weren't easy for me. It was exhausting. But remember how we didn't expect our child to reciprocate.
We didn't expect them to create love and connection for us. Because you knew you were choosing to care for and love this tiny human who wasn't capable of that. So as parents, when did we start to expect our kids to give us those feelings? At what point did we start to establish rules in our minds about what love and connection with our kids should look like? At the height of my anger with my son, I remember the words coming out of my mouth, after everything I've done for you.
It sounds awful to admit, but sometimes we get there. We've worked so incredibly hard to raise these people. And while we didn't do it for the reward, there is a part of us that expects to get to feel connected to them in return.
In fact, when we start to lose these feelings of connection and purpose, we can impose this expectation on our kids. Tell them they're making us feel a certain way that we don't want. As if it's their job to fill that void for us.
I hate to be the one to break it to you. And look, my friend, I had to face this harsh reality myself. But our kids don't owe us anything.
You are absolutely welcome to continue expecting connection and love from them. And God willing, they'll give it to you willingly. But if that doesn't quite look like what you hoped, when it starts to feel like not enough once they leave home, do you really want to put the pressure on them of being responsible for your emotional well-being and happiness? I say all of this with love, my friend.
I know how deeply it hurts when your child pulls away. I understand the ache of missing your child when they leave home. These feelings are real and valid.
But those feelings aren't your child's responsibility. And as time goes on, our kids are going to inevitably get caught up in their own lives, college, then a job, potentially nowhere near where you live, maybe marriage, their own families. I certainly hope that I'll be able to stay closely connected to my boys as they venture into the world creating their own lives.
But if I wait for them to meet my expectation of what that connection should look like, I'm destined to set myself up for hurt and disappointment. I'm so happy to say that both of my boys are involved in relationships that appear to be happy and healthy. Truth be told, my oldest son's first relationship taught both of my boys more than I ever could about what a healthy relationship should look like and what it shouldn't.
That relationship actually played a very important role in making my son even more confident and resilient. So from that perspective, maybe it was the perfect relationship for him. It's too early to say whether they've found true love in their current relationships, but I've actually decided ahead of time that whomever they choose to give their hearts, I will also choose to love and feel connected to that person.
The choices aren't in any way up to me, but it is up to me to choose love and to manage my expectations of what that should look like. Expectations are such a tricky thing. I absolutely think we get to have them.
The truth is we always have them, whether we admit it or not. The question is, do you have a right to enforce your expectations? Do you have a right to enforce your view of what love, connection, and purpose looks like as it relates to how another person behaves? Look, as long as we believe that someone else should act a certain way, we're going to feel disappointed or frustrated when they don't. It makes perfect sense, but why do we get to say how our teens should behave as they go about the business of living their lives? Is it because we feel responsible to teach them how to behave? There might be some expectations worth enforcing here, but more often than not, what we feel responsible for is getting them to meet our expectations so that we can feel like we're doing a good job as a parent.
But who says? What award is it that we're trying to earn? To me, being the best parent I can be involves navigating my expectations for what is right for my kids, being willing to enforce those expectations that I think are most important to the extent I even have the ability to enforce those expectations now with my adult boys, but also being willing to let go of my expectations if it's clear that my boys have their own ideas about how to live their life. My purpose as a mom has evolved. It's no longer about getting my boys to meet my expectations of what a successful, happy life should look like.
It's about me learning about and being open to what they think a successful, happy life should look like, and offering my support while also accepting when they don't want it. In fact, I would say now that my purpose is not only to love my boys unconditionally, but to cheer them on unconditionally, decide to feel connected to them unconditionally. And by unconditional, I mean that I actively work on feeling purpose, love, connection, and pride.
No matter what my boys do, my feelings are not their responsibility to create. They are my choice, my purpose. The thing about purpose is it's not easy.
Purpose takes effort and dedication. When you fail, it requires you to pick yourself up and try again. There are still times when I feel sad that I haven't gotten a text back from my son in college, or when I'm disappointed that my son's too busy to eat dinner with me again.
I am constantly disappointed by my own unmet expectations. But that is about me. It's not my boys' fault or their responsibility to make me feel better.
We're going into the holidays. My oldest will be back home soon. We'll get college news.
I already know that I have hopes and expectations for what the next few weeks will look like. So the gift I'm deciding to give my sons is that I'm going to take responsibility for my expectations. I'm going to manage my own feelings when reality doesn't quite meet expectations.
But I'm also going to cherish those moments when reality exceeds my wildest dreams about what love, connection, and purpose can look like. I'm deciding to make room for all of it, the joy and the love, and the disappointment. It's mine to feel, mine to create, mine to own.
The gift I give my boys is that it's never their responsibility to make me feel what I want to feel. And you know what? Because I don't enforce that expectation on them, I know that when they choose to give me love and connect with me on their terms, that it's from the heart. It's what they want.
Whatever that looks like, I cherish it and I celebrate it. Loving unconditionally. Loving unconditionally.
Feeling purpose unconditionally. Connecting with the people you love without expectations of what that needs to look like. It's a gift that you not only give to your teen and to other people that you love, but you get to give it to yourself.
As you go into the holidays, consider that this could be the most beautiful gift you will ever receive. Your own feelings of love, connection, and purpose. You create all of it, my friend.
You have been creating it all along. It's time you take ownership of this creative process. This is the work I do with my clients, the power to create the experience of life that you want.
You already believe you love your child unconditionally. Consider that you can feel any other positive emotion unconditionally as well. Happy holidays, my friend.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0, at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
