Parenting Part III

     The last two days I've written about the parenting challenges I've been having with my son and my youngest child.  Now we come to the eldest.  At 24, Jasmyn (they/them pronouns) really is an adult.  Sort of. Regardless of their status, I find Jasmyn the hardest to write about and yet for the last couple years Jasmyn has been the one I've been most concerned about.  They are the hardest to write about because it is not as easy to write about parenting them without betraying personal information that they would not be comfortable with my sharing in this format.  With Aislynn, I wrote about a situation she is in that I have found challenging.  With Jonah, I wrote about our relationship from my perspective.  But with Jasmyn?  My concerns about Jasmyn have much more to do with personal factors.  So I will do my best not to be "revealing" while still sharing the challenges of being a parent to my first child.

     Jasmyn is currently living at home.  They are attending an on-line graduate school.  That is their "work" for now and it made sense, then, for them to save money by living at home while attending school.  But this has been challenging for both of us.  

    In many ways parenting adults is harder than parenting kids in that we can step in when our kids are young, we can "take control" when we see that things are not right, we can insist on doing things a certain way.  When they are adults, it is not as easy.  I still weigh in, I can't help but do so.  However, that is as far as I can take it, especially with my 24-year-old. So when they make decisions that I think are unhealthy, even hurtful for themselves or others, I can say my piece but then I have to let it go.  That is hard. In some ways we've worked this through. The first year Jasmyn was home was really tough.  I had a hard time letting go of expectations for their involvement in certain activities that I felt were family activities and family commitments, for example.  But we did work that through.  I've been able to adjust my expectations so that now, if they decide to accompany us on something that I previously would have said was a "family event" I am very pleasantly surprised.  If they don't, that's their choice. It took work on my part to step back, but I've done it and so that part feels better.  

    But there remain these areas where I have a much harder time letting alone.  I have wishes for all of my children that I don't think are outrageous: I want them to interact with their world in ways that are positive and helpful.  I want them to find work that is, ideally, meaningful, but even if it isn't meaningful, I hope that it will be satisfying work for them.  I want them to have dreams and visions and to work towards those ends. I want them to have friends and positive, healthy relationships with others. I want them to have a spirituality that is life-giving and meaningful to them. I want them to pursue positive and healthy activities with their free time. But more than all of these, or maybe as a sum of all of these, what I really hope for them is that they are functional and have joy in their lives.  

    What happens, then, when they aren't?  When all of my hopes for them are not being fulfilled and when I cannot help them because they don't want my help, don't want to hear what I have to say, don't want to take my advice, don't want my interference, and don't want to do any of the things that I "know" would help?  I've tried so many different approaches: sharing articles, my own struggles, stories I've heard. Mostly I've just been direct.  But I can't fix this.  I cannot make my adult children make better choices, and I cannot help fix things or improve situations that they don't want me to fix.  And wow, is it hard to let that go!

    As I've said many times before, their pain is my pain.  When they hurt, I hurt.  So my job here is two-fold.  First, I need to learn to be okay with hurting for my kids and not trying to fix it.  I need to learn to sit in the pain and not try to move it out for my own sake.  

    Secondly, I have to learn how to love from a distance: to figure out how to live my own life and how to find my own sense of wholeness and joy, even when I see them struggling.  This second one is really tough.  

    There is a song that I first heard a few year ago now that used to remind me of my son, but now reminds me of number one child.  It's called "little flower" and some of the words that move me so deeply include: 

                                                            "I won't walk beside you. 

I won't take you home.  

But I'll hold your heart from a distance 

as all your blossoms come and go....

And when you wake all alone in the darkness

As the autumn winds are blowing cold

You might hear a voice in the distance

A love that never let you go"

    Jasmyn is with me, but in so many ways, Jasmyn is no longer with me.  This first child who used to be my shadow, my mirror, and in many ways my best friend, has gone in a different direction, even while home.  Jasmyn still lets me in, but it is very different now: there is a distance, a way of keeping me separate and apart, that is difficult when I want their life to be better, more full, happier and I am no longer allowed to help.  To love from a distance, while physically close together, is a new experience for me.  And it calls from me everything I have to give as a person and as a parent.     

    Parenting is both the most rewarding and the hardest work I've ever done.  I think I may be closer to the kids than I otherwise might have been because of the traumas we've experienced together.  But this particular stage of parenting, this one of letting go of each of them in different ways and to different degrees calls me to pull from resources deep within to learn to love from that distance. That kind of love feels even deeper than when I loved them up close as young children.  It is a more independent, respectful, and equal love.  But it also requires an ability to trust and to be okay with a distance that is new for me. 

    As I said when I wrote about Jonah, that first day, I imagine God must feel the same as we ebb and flow in our relationships with our creator-parent. 

Parenting, Part II

     Yesterday I wrote about my son.  Today I write about my youngest daughter.  Aislynn left for school a couple weeks ago because she volunteered to help with school orientation.  She had gotten into a four-bedroom apartment on campus, but the process of getting in and being assigned an apartment was a little odd.  She clicked on an apartment she wanted.  She was the first one.  Later, three others clicked on that same apartment, and hence it came to be that she had three flat mates whom she'd never met.  All of them were friends.  All of them were male.  All of them were serious party-animals: inviting their friends over to join them in heavy drinking and smoking and using weed and other substances.  NOT GOOD.  Can I say that again?  NOT GOOD.  

    She was there alone for the first week because she was helping with orientation for the first years.  But soon the other apartment mates began to arrive.  One has been fairly nice: asking her if there were rules for the apartment that mattered to her.  She told him she didn't want smoking in the common areas and wanted to know if guests were over.  But the other two won't talk to her, didn't introduce themselves, started smoking and inviting folk over right away, and thus it began.  While Aislynn has her own room with a lock, the doors are thin and the noise and smoke from the others has been intense and problematic.  Add to that that Aislynn starts each school day with 8am classes while they are up late with their "activities" and it has really been a nightmare.  Aislynn told me that these boys are not even that nice to each other.  One asked for a ride somewhere and the other two refused saying he just used them all the time.

    After only a couple days of this Aislynn was clear she needed to move out.  I was clear that it was a dangerous situation.  A group of 19 year old boys, drunk and high with only one female there, one they don't like and don't even care about enough to greet?  She applied to housing to move out, and I moved into a state of not-sleeping.  I kept worrying about what was going to happen.  

    While Aislynn is not prone to drama or exaggeration, the few things she did share convinced me more and more that this was not a good situation.  Her stuff was moved (like dishes and food), then her stuff started disappearing (again, like dishes and food).  No one asked if they could have her loaf of bread, or her fruit, or her cup, they just took it. They still refused to acknowledge her existence and refused to tell her when they were bringing other friends over. Then the ants showed up.  Aislynn is very clean: but not everyone is.  So we ordered her ant traps because she was the only one who cared that the ants were there.  

    Today marks two weeks since all of this began.  From the beginning I've been asking if I could call the resident life people and push on them to get her moved.  But Aislynn was very clear: she is a 19-year-old adult now, trying to live as an adult.  She wanted to take care of it herself.  She knew who to contact, she had contacted them. She took my advice about what to say, and they said they were working on it and we just needed to wait.  But it felt more and more unsafe to me and I was not seeing the movement that I felt was essential in getting Aislynn out.  As a parent, how do you know at what point you need to step in?  I kept worrying that my choice not to step in was setting her up for a disaster.  But I also worried that if I forced my way in, Aislynn would feel I had crossed a line and would shut down, something that had happened before. I also worried she would feel disempowered that she had somehow not been able to do it on her own, and that I had not trusted that she could.  But I struggled to not interfere.  The best I could do was to just check in with her again and again throughout each day, making sure she was still safe, still okay.

    Then today she woke up sick. It was not just a little cold.  Her throat hurt, she was exhausted and running a fever, she felt she'd been run over by a truck.  She went to eat breakfast and her food was gone, so there was nothing for her to eat.  And she was certain that her illness was caused by a mixture of stress and filth from her flat mates.  

    Mama bear here had had enough!

    "Aislynn, I am asking for your permission to contact resident life on my own.  There are many reasons why I might be able to move what you have not been able to move.  It is time, and I need this from you."  She gave me permission, though honestly, if she hadn't, I would have contacted them anyway.  

    I left them two messages.  The first one using the terms "dangerous situation for my daughter" and "illness caused by the stress of a scary and unsafe environment", and the second, despite promising Aislynn I would be "nice" using phrases suggested by my professor sister like, "I will be contacting the title 9 coordinator since this is a hostile and unsafe living environment if this is not dealt with today" and "I will also be contacting the authorities since illegal activities such as underage drinking and drug use are part of the issue unless this is dealt with in the next 24 hours."

    Within a half hour Aislynn had been offered a different apartment. While she cannot move in until Saturday, she has a contract now for a two bedroom apartment with a female flat mate, whom she has contacted by email. Still a stranger, but this HAS to be better! The process is moving and she can now try to sleep off her illness and pack.  I may be flying back to CO on Friday to help her move just to ensure that there is no unpleasantness with her old flat mates.   

    So many thoughts about this.  First, I will still not sleep until she is out of there, though she does have a couple friends who have invited her to sleep on their couch if necessary.  

    Second, I still feel that it was right to allow Aislynn to try her best to resolve the issue on her own since that is what she insisted on doing. She feels empowered by her own abilities to make the phone calls, send the emails, and to do what needs to be done for herself.  While my help was necessary in the end, Aislynn got the ball rolling.  She could not have continued what she was doing on her own behalf now that she is ill.  And she feels good about what she was able to do.

    Third, I trusted my own instincts in this, and at the point at which it became clear to me that residence life employees were not going to help in a timely way without some pressure, I added the necessary pressure.  Aislynn does an amazing job of adulting in general.  But she is still naive about the dangers in the world or what it takes sometimes to motivate busy and perhaps overworked people to help you. I don't like threatening.  But I will do what I can, whatever that is, if I feel it will not make the situation worse.  

    Fourth, I had a number of folk in my life second guessing my choices in this. Some said I was not standing up for my kid with enough strength or insistence. I understand why they felt that way, but when we judge others, we never see the complete picture. If I had interfered sooner, Aislynn would not have felt that I trusted her, and she would not have felt capable of dealing with it as much as she did.  I had constant contact with her and kept offering to step in, to fly out, to write, to call.  Aislynn was very clear until this morning that she did not want my interference in this but wanted to handle it herself.  And as I mentioned yesterday, there is huge value in trusting your kid to try to work through their problems on their own.  We may not agree with their choices, but trusting them to make those choices is important to their growth, their independence and their ability to adult on their own.  More, it is important to their sense of self-worth as people who are no longer seen as just "children" in need to being defended and protected, but as capable adults-in-the-making.  For this reason, I may have to let her move on her own, as much as I want to help.  She is again saying she has friends who can help and she'd rather feel she could do it without my help.  I may not like all her choices, but I have to respect them.  And still, there were others who said I was being too much of a helicopter parent, but I stepped in when I felt it was necessary.

    And the lessons for me?  Several.  I need to continue to trust my own instincts while still listening to the wisdom around me. I need to let go and trust that I've raised capable, amazing children, and yet, even as I let go, I still need to be ready to step in when needed. Third, as I said yesterday, we are so connected to our children that they truly suffer nothing alone.  When things are bad for them, they are bad for us too.  I'm looking forward to Aislynn being out of her current apartment, not only for her own sake but so that I can sleep again!  And finally, once again, all things come to an end: good, bad, indifferent: they all move.  This has been a true challenge, but it is almost over, and for that I am grateful!  

Parenting, Part I

         I jumped back in to work and life with both feet once the sabbatical ended, which means finding time to actually write has been difficult.  I need to make it a priority, just as I have made gardening a priority.  Writing is therapeutic for me and hopefully helpful for those who read what I write as well.  While my list of things I've wanted to write about is extensive, today I feel it necessary to write about parenting.  And specifically the focus will be on my son.

     Jonah flew back to Alaska yesterday for his fourth year in college (notice, I didn't say his "senior" year... the program he is in is a five year program and he wants to do a couple minors as well, so probably more like a six year program for him).  As I sat in church preparing for the service, someone asked me if it was going to be hard now that Jonah had left.  My first reaction was, "I will miss him greatly, but at the same time, I'm ready for life to return to normal."  I felt his leaving marked the end of an extraordinary summer that encompassed my sabbatical, as well as time with Aislynn and then time with Jonah before they both went back to school.  I love my son so very deeply, but he and I have always been a bit like oil and water.  Now that he is an adult, we do better, mostly.  But it takes a great deal of energy for us to navigate how to talk to and interact with one another well.  It takes work, on both our parts, to be careful about how we say things and to ask for clarity when we need help understanding the other point of view.  During the couple weeks he was home, we were not without conflict and it was deeply painful conflict at that.  Even the middle of the night before he left at 4am Sunday morning for the airport, we found ourselves in an argument.  When each of us gets stressed, we have been in the habit of "poking the bear" and we relate to one another as that bear.  The stress then of his leaving sent us into a last round of arguments.  It's exhausting, for both of us.  And at times it is very hurtful, no doubt for both of us as well.  As a result, I thought I was looking forward to at least having things be not quite so exhausting once he was gone.  

    But I've found myself wondering if part of the reason we fight so much and so deeply isn't the level of love we have for one another.  Jonah is my only son.  I didn't know what it could be to raise a son for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am one of two girls in my family of origin.  But the bond I have with him runs so incredibly deep that sometimes I feel I may be too enmeshed with him.  I mean several things by that.  First, it has been a challenge for me to let him go and choose to do things that I believe to be dangerous or other than what I think is best for him.  He's a 21-year-old young adult, but it's been difficult for me to accept that. So when he decided he wanted to go ski-packing in the arctic circle in the middle of winter, I was concerned, upset and and I tried to talk him out of it.  But he survived it fine and seems to have had a wonderful experience.  Now he wants to rent a dry cabin in Fairbanks to live in next semester.  Again, not what I would want for him: a dry cabin is exactly what it sounds like it would be: a place without running water and many are also without electricity.  We have the conversations: "How, then, will you keep yourself warm during the month or so that it's -40 degrees?"  "How will you even START a fire at that temperature?  Or sleep through it without freezing off parts of your face?"  "Where will you bathe?"  "How will you pay for the car that you will need to get to and from school?"  "Where will you plug in the car in those temperatures when you don't have electricity?"  "What if the generator goes?  Then what will you do?"  And the questions go on.  It is hard for me to let him be the adult he is trying to be, but I'm working on it. 

    Secondly, his opinions that differ from my own can be hard for me to take.  I'm working on that as well.  He has his own worldview and ideas, and sometimes they upset me, especially when I can't understand how he sees the world the way he does. Still, I believe I've done more growing through my relationship with my son than I could have expected.  He challenges me to be better, to be open to seeing the world differently and to accepting the differences between us more fully.  He challenges me to let him be the adult he is, and by extension to let others be who they fully are.

    Perhaps because of all of this, though, I was looking forward to a short break from the intensity that is our relationship.  But, no surprise, now that he is gone, I just find myself heartbroken all over again.  We raise our kids to leave us.  And I keep expecting that each time they go it will be easier, but it isn't.  I look for him when I look out my office window, hoping he will show up for lunch or to go for a walk.  I listen for him at home, wondering what he will say about what I just heard or saw.  I am trying to let him have a little space to start his classes (which began today) and to settle into his new room at school.  But he is on my mind and in my heart to the point where little else can hold my attention today.

    What is this strange part of life in which we are part of creating beings who break our hearts constantly but also fill us with so much love it defines who we are and who we want to be?  What is this strange activity called parenting that takes over our beings and makes us see more clearly our own flaws and shortcomings while calling us constantly to do better and be better for those who are moving on anyway?  Why were we created to love with such ferocity those who will return that love not to us but to their own offspring?  

    For me, it connects me to God as parent.  And I find myself wondering if God also loves us with an intensity that is so beyond what we can imagine that we can only return the very smallest measure of that love to God.  And I wonder, because for me faith has never been "heaven insurance" but has always been about relationships, if God also feels that same loss and pain when any of God's children choose other than relationship with God.  Maybe.  We don't know.  

    For today, my thoughts are with my son.  I am so proud of the young man he has become.  And I am so grateful that we stay connected, even across the miles.