Bringing a new baby into the world is emotional and overwhelming and, at times, even isolating. But luckily, friends and family are usually there to rally around you. Those early years are filled with lots of frustrating and hilarious parenting fails you vent to your friends about over text or email or a glass of wine. Maybe you even pour your heart out about them in a blog. Whatever the case, all that venting is accepted when your kids are little; even encouraged. But once your kids work their way out of diapers and careen towards adulthood, those stories of frustrating parenting moments tend to stay behind closed doors. Suddenly, they all feel a bit too … personal. And in the process, says writer Liz Petrone, parenthood can start to feel a bit lonely.
This 'loneliness' has become the focus of a recent Facebook post written by Petrone, and it's resonating everywhere with parents of teens.
"I mean ALL parenting is lonely work sometimes," she clarified, "in very literal ways when they are teeny and you can’t really leave the house or talk to other humans because if you leave the room they will roll or fall or choke and even if they didn’t you’re too tired and unshowered to interact anyway."
But there's an obvious shift that's happened since her days as a mom of young kids, and it's something she can't help but notice now.
"Back then too I could speak freely about the mistakes and the hurdles and other than the whole 'why’d you even have kids if you were not going to celebrate every moment by shining sunshine out every orifice, even the ones broken by giving birth' contingent (who are easy enough to ignore), people got it," Petrone continued. "Baby problems are real problems, no doubt, but they’re also pretty commonly understood and easy to share."
Of course, there are some similarities between the old days and the new, she says.
"What I will say is I remember lying awake at night and watching my babies sleep and even though they were exhausting the ever loving sh-t out of me, part of me wanted to wake them up because I missed them," writes Petrone. "And THAT — the missing of someone who is right in front of you — is exactly what parenting teenagers feels like."
Some of that comes from the fact that so much of their lives are happening away from you, even though they're still living under your roof.
"Current mood," commented one mom on the post. "I have never wanted to know every damn detail of someone’s life more than at the exact moment they stop telling me everything."
And isn't that the ultimate irony, writes Petrone — that you spend so long wishing they'd grow up and be independent, and as soon as they start to show signs of that, you suddenly don't feel ready for it?
That brought her to another truth we rarely speak about, too ...
"Babies are babies for such a small period of finite time that we don’t ever really get to settle into any kind of routine so mundane and predictable that we inevitably grow to (a) love and (b) resent it just a little," she continues. "But these older kids? They’ve woken in my house in the morning and fallen asleep in my house at night for so many consecutive days that my dumb a– just started to think it would go on forever that way."
But of course, that's not the way it's meant to be.
" … never has that arc of time stretched so clear across my horizon than it does as I watch these older children become people who I respect, enjoy, and already miss the h-ll out of," concludes Petrone.
But this mama is far from alone. Plenty of others shared their own thoughts about this scary new transition period.
"In what seems like the blink of an eye I’ve gone from, 'How am I going to survive' to 'How am I going to survive without them?'" commented one mom.
"Now I’m crying," wrote another. "My daughter just started her senior year. I just thought I had more time."
Others took the time to assure moms of teens that there is hope on the other side.
"I'm on the other side of this now with a college graduate who lives just a little too far away," wrote one mom. "I know I hug her a bit too long and maybe too tight, but dang it!, that hug needs to last a me for a while! The good news … she tells me things again!"
But perhaps this mom put it best when she told it like it is: "This is the time where you 'break up' and your teen learns independence, makes many mistakes and as parents, we learn how to let go. It’s very hard and painful at times … [but] I promise you they always find their way home … especially for a free dinner."
