I love my kids to death.
I can’t fucking WAIT for them to be out of the house. (youngest is now 17… Sooooooooooon…)
I am not going to change my lifestyle in any way when they are gone; not going to try to “recapture my youth”; just going to continue my life while not having to take care of single-dad-ing every day. I need a break.
Really? That sounds weird to me. None of my friends cried when their kids went to college, at least, not that they told me about.
I did express regret that after tons of work rearing the children to the point where they had started contributing to the household (cooking dinner, running errands…) they ran off to use those skills elsewhere.
Anyway, most parents love their kids but also enjoy time without kid-responsibilities. It sounds like she’s more excited about the freedom from responsibility than she is sad about seeing less of her kids. But it’s only the latter that’s unusual, i think it’s completely normal to also relish that freedom.
Sorry, I mistyped. When my dad had me SHE was 40 (she turned 41 a few days after I was born). My dad was 21.
Not normal for a normal parent.
But as with everything, there are exceptions.
See, I think those people weeping and moaning about their kids moving out are the ones who are abnormal, and are using them to cover for their own fears and anxieties. I raised two boys and got them to successful adulthood and when it was time for them to move out we all helped, the step and bio parents with nary a tear shed. If you’re so stuck on the fact that your Little Boy is moving out of the house you need to let go. I still Love them, I still get them goofy gifts for their B-days and Christmas and I generally like who they grew up to be. But from the start I knew I was raising little people who would turn into grown-ups, not a justification or a job.
Having an empty nest is great. Having them visit and leave again is great. Having them move back in would be a trial. I’d still do it if they had a need, but it would suck.
A boarding school seems a bit extreme, but I can also interpret it a different way: The kids are going to a boarding school for really good reasons. The plan might always have been to move to the beach town once the kids are out of the house. Without boarding school the beach town might have waited until the kids left for college, but no reason to put life on hold just because the kids are 16 and 14 instead of 20 and 18; empty nest is empty nest.
We love our kid, but neither my wife nor I cried when she started daycare as a toddler or when she started kindergarten, truly it was a relief. I often read parents reporting being completely devestated when their kids start daycare. I don’t deny their feelings, I just don’t get it. I’ll see her later. I don’t have to be around her all day.
Sometimes the lack of being upset is wielded as “mommy guilt” or “mommy shaming”—you’re a bad parent unless you want to be attached to your kid 24/7.
I can understand the idea that you’re ready for your kids to be gone, at least in theory. Once you become a parent, the children become a sort of all-consuming thing in most aspects of your life. Being more or less free of that is very appealing, even if they’re mostly adults by the time they’re in high school. I mean, my kids are 7 and 10, and I’m looking ahead already to teenage years when we can do stuff like go out to eat without having to arrange babysitters, or a few years later go on trips just the two of us without the kids. Stuff like that.
And I can see the attraction to moving to your dream location, be it the beach, the mountains, the forest, whatever. And wanting to do it without kids makes some sense as well.
But the part I’m not getting is the whole boarding school part- if they’re in their mid teens, they’re probably sophomores in high school- you’re only talking 3 years or so before they’ll be out of your hair and in college anyway. Why not just tough it out and be a real parent for 3 years and THEN move to the beach once you’re in college? The timing seems very weird to me.
It sounds super-selfish to me to be willing as a parent to ship your kids off to boarding school just so you can move to the beach.
I used to be in a bookclub in Indonesia where most of the members were British or Australian. They couldn’t wait to ship their kids off to boarding school back home when the kids reached high school age or in some cases younger.
As an American I found that strange - normal for THEM, but not something I could ever do. And I speak as someone who loves her alone time. My mother strongly advocated that my son be sent back to some la-di-la boarding school in New England for high school, but to me that was out of the question - not because I’d have missed my kid, but because it seemed to me that he still benefited from having mom and dad around. As parents we wanted to support and guide him when he was frustrated with a teacher, disappointed if he didn’t make a team he tried out for, etc.
It might have been different had our son had a different temperament though. Some teens don’t listen to/take comfort from their parents anyway (ours did); the rules and schedules provided in an objective environment might be better for them. If that were the case, and I genuinely felt boarding school would benefit my kid, in that case I would have gladly shipped him off AND celebrated my liberation from daily parenting duties.
So, it all depends on the kid, the culture, the immediate environment … it’s probably all normal.
This ^
Ah, the sweet spot between diapers and puberty!
I think you’re thinking of boarding school as some terrible punishment instead of an awesome opportunity. I have no idea how these kids feel about it, but some teens really like boarding school - fewer adults watching them than at home, more independence, and some are elite for kids with lofty college goals.
Also, I strongly disagree with the notion that teenager who attends boarding school lacks “real parents.”
This could be selfish mom or could be a great opportunity for eager kids that enables the parents to move on the the “empty nest” phase a few years earlier - a win/win.
No, no… I meant more from the parental perspective of what’s so important about moving to the beach that you want to ship your kids off to boarding school?
I mean, if the kids are into it, and the mom is seeing it as being an empty nester a few years earlier, then that’s great. But it sounded more like the mom was pushing them to boarding school to enable herself to move. Which seemed shady to me.
I wonder if the parents who cry when their kids go to college went away to college themselves. My wife and I both did, and it was great, so our kids got the impression it was great also - which it was for them.
My cousin sent her 3 children to boarding school and believe me, it was a beautiful place where they got a great education. It’s not like some orphanage out of Dickens. So people shouldn’t act like the mother in the OP did a terrible thing.
I suspect parents who cry when their kids go to college are sad because they’re going to miss their kids. A person spends a certain percentage of their lifetime in close proximity to their parents; a recent Kurzgesagt video pointed out that by the time you become an adult and move out of your parents’ home, most of that together-time has already elapsed; for the rest of your life, the total amount of time you spend with your parents will probably be measured in weeks.
I was a little kid when my older brother and sister went off to college. I cried my eyes out each time, and it definitely didn’t have anything to do with thoughts of what their college experience might be like for them.
I read something once about birds pushing their young out of the nest. If they didn’t, the young would grow too fat to fly…they have to start developing wing strength.
I would give parents a wide berth on this. I’ve known too many helicopter parents. Plus everybody sets their own personal boundaries, parents are individuals, etc. Maybe mom wants the privacy to get laid or do other things.
I’m sure everyone posting here just LOVED living with their parents as teenagers, and probably wanted to continue living at home all through college, and continue to live in the same town/neighborhood as their parents because they just love spending time with them…
I don’t know, maybe the mom described in the OP is a little too excited, but it seems like the “norm” is for parents to cling to their teenage children while the teenage children struggle desperately to get away. That, to me, is the quintessential American pop-culture relationship between parents and their teenage children. Is that what we want?
I think my wife is going to struggle a lot when our teenage kids leave the house. She definitely sees the upside of being an empty-nester, and is looking forward to expanding her personal interests, but she also really enjoys the friendship she has with our kids. At the same time, she completely rejected all of her own parents’ attempts at being friends and couldn’t wait to move away. It’s a mystery to me.
I hope to have a good adult relationship with my kids, and I really enjoyed parenting them as actual children, but the teenage years are a huge transition. I see myself not so much as a parent but a sort of guidance counselor / resident advisor. My influence over them has waned to almost nothing, and they’re figuring out their own interests, hobbies, and dreams. When I was a teenager I didn’t want to hang out with my parents, and they gave me space to figure things out. Once I became an adult we became friends again. I like that.
Parents make decisions for their kids all the time that also benefit them. Like moving to a house that is closer to a school for their children while coincidentally also being closer to their work. Or suggesting they take a class or participate in activity that they already engage in or at the same location where they already go. This is not a zero sum game where only one side benefits, and it is fine to be more excited by what you gain out of it than your kids.
//i\\
Can’t say I really find anything aberrant about the situation. Not every adult makes a great parent for every age of children. Newborn, infant, toddler, pre-teen, teenager… they all have their varied challenges. She may have dreamed of having kids 15 years ago, and loved it when they were very young, but the cracks in the fantasy appeared as they aged up. If she felt she wasn’t being that great of a parent, sending them off to boarding school is doing everyone a favor. Kids that age are learning more about life from their peers than their parents anyway. An adult can have more than one dream at a time, and if they can figure out a way to take care of responsibilities and realize a different dream at the same time, good for them.
I wanted children with the intent to raise two less assholes in the world, and I think my ex and I did alright. My goal was to always unleash them upon the world ready to be good people and I always knew that they would be leaving home. I was happy for them when they got their freedom to do fully adult things and happily helped them pack their stuff up. I never really have understood how this takes people by surprise and there’s sudden sadness… literally everyone knew it was coming. And for the most part, this isn’t some awful breakup where you’ll never hear from or see them again.
Yes, I’m overjoyed there’s no more parent/teacher conferences again, or math homework, or painful concerts on a stage full of off-key instruments. I get to buy an unsensible car for myself now, walk nekkid around the house, not plan meals for a family. I enjoyed having and raising kids, and I enjoy not doing it as well.
I can’t wait until a couple of little monsters who live nearby get shipped off to boarding school, or at least summer camp.
The majority (I don’t know how big a majority) of parents love their children. But a significant minority do not. My mother only cared about one of her children (it wasn’t me), and the rest, if she could have done so without censure – including, I should add, that of her own conscience – she would have left by the side of the road. She didn’t have fantasies of a free life without us as much as she had no native interest in caring for us or spending time with us.
Many women cry when their children leave home. I know plenty who have. It’s pretty normal.
Your co-worker does sound like a selfish, self-absorbed, shallow person, and while that’s not unusual, she also appears to lack any sense of what her selfishness sounds like when it comes out of her mouth, which is somewhat more rare, especially in women.