THE LOVING KISS-OFF | FAMILY COUNSELING CENTER ASSOCIATION

I took a daughter of mine to a distant city yesterday and left her there. She’s entering a doc grad program at a university and is now immersed in adjusting to a new city and teaching her first class.

Your kids may be your kids all your life, but good parenting means setting them up on their own to make it without you. You won’t be here forever. The kids need to make it on their own.

Her dad and I did maintenance on her car, bought her a new work wardrobe, paid for her to have a decent haircut–all things she needed. Then we loaded her stuff into a U-Haul truck and moved her to her new life. We’re thinking she’s going to have to sink or swim there.

It’s really up to her.

This is the hard part of parenting–amongst many hard parts–the letting go. It’s both a relief and an anxiety. She needs us to believe in her and if we do that, we need to act like she can handle life. Really, that’s what most kids need, to know they are capable and strong and that we believe in them.

We get to go on with our own lives now and, it may sound callous and cold, but that’s a relief.

Still, it’s hard.

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J. writes of depression and anxiety and not knowing where to turn:

“I need someone to talk to….I am a single mom of a precious twelve year-old daughter that I love so much, but she is the only reason I keep going…I have been struggling with anxiety and high blood pressure…and worry…I feel worthless and pathetic…I can’t seem to make friends….

Dear J.

Get thee to a therapist and do it quickly. You shouldn’t have to suffer like this and you need guidance how to make your life better. If you don’t have insurance that will pay for mental health treatment, look for a community agency that offers counseling on a sliding scale or a university program that arranges for counseling with a graduate student who’s got professorial back-up. You need someone to listen to you, to hear your distress and to remind you that you’re not a terrible person.

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G. writes of struggling to let her baby son establish relationships beyond her:

“My mother-in-law watches my year-old son and she’s doing a great job…but when she goes out, she doesn’t call me. It’s starting to tear my marriage apart…Its making me feel unimportant. I want to know everything that goes on with my son…whether it’s going to the store or going to the park…”

Dear G.

Get a grip. You say yourself that your mother-in-law is doing a great job in caring for your son. Let her do it. Having a baby can trigger stuff you haven’t dealt with and this maybe what’s going on with you. Parenting is the constant process of learning to let go(see my remarks above). You want your son to grow into a healthy young man. He needs to establish relationships with lots of people. He needs different resources…he needs more than you. This may be hard to hear, but it’s true.

If this freaks you out so powerfully that you’re having major conflict within yourself and with your husband. You might resent having had to return to work, fearing a loss of connection with your son. Or you may fear that your mother-in-law is becoming more significant to your son than you. Even unfounded or unlikely anxieties can cause emotional distress. You might need to look at (with help if necessary) what the “mothering” role means to you. It sounds like you started defining yourself by your parenting role alone. This is a dangerous, scary thing to do (although it’s tempting). You may never have felt this important to anyone. In the beginning, your child needs you for everything. He needs the haven of your body and even the blood that circulated between you. Everything. When you gave birth, though, it started a process of him growing up and moving into the world.

If you’re having a hard time with letting him do this, maybe you need to look at how else you can get what you need.

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M. writes of her relationship challenges with her live-in boyfriend and his/her kids:

“For around the past four months, we have been getting into fights; fights that are little and fights that are big…My fear is that…we could lose each other and I don’t want that to happen. My goal is for he and I to be able to trust each other; work together, minimize arguments and find helpful activities to have fun that don’t involved negative environments. I don’t want to lose him…Can you help us?”

Dear M.

You guys need to learn to argue and I mean that in the best way. Conflicts in relationships are unavoidable. Anyway you go at it, the two of you are going to disagree about stuff, particularly with step-parenting and trying to blend two families. I’m also thinking you need to look at your value systems and see if these are in conflict. Your ominous reference to “negative environments” leads me to think you two don’t see eye-to-eye on some basic issues.

Yelling and arguing with a loved one feels really bad and most people go to great lengths to avoid this, if they can. But you still need to learn to communicate and that’s sometimes a difficult process. We don’t always sit down and talk in a calm voice, although no one should be looking around for missiles to throw, either. You need to hear what he’s saying and to have him hear your concerns. I cannot stress this enough. If you can’t learn to do this, you won’t make it.

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Relationships are complicated and difficult…and we need them to make our lives worth living.