Life-changing events don’t need to be a surprise in order to cause sadness. I knew my mom was going to die six months before it happened (not in the abstract “she’s going to die someday” way - she was terminally ill, and this was her prognosis); it was still crushingly sad when it finally happened.
While this may be true, nothing posted directly indicates that. In the original post it does say if they get accepted. It does not say that she pushed them to apply, or that she has decided to be miserable, make them miserable, or move anyway if they don’t get accepted. If she was truly self-absorbed and selfish she would move to her ideal town anyway, or not mention she had kids at all. Being excited how a change in your children’s lives would also provide you with new opportunities does make you selfish.
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I think it’s a lot more common for teenagers and parents to get along now than it used to be. I don’t know why: I suspect that the adversarial model we think of as the “quintessential American pop-culture relationship” is actually less common, across space and time, than a more communal, mutually supportive norm (though I am sure actual individual relationships were all over the place, as they always have been). Rather than ask “why are kids all the sudden content to live at home, and their parents content to have them?”, the better question might be “why, in post war America, did generations start to resent each other?”
Indeed. In other parts of the world there is not necessarily an expectation of a rift between parents and teens.
My son, who attended international schools in Jakarta for most of his schooling, grew up socializing entirely with South Asian, Korean, and Indonesian kids; he rarely had friends from Western cultures.
When he was finally surrounded by Americans, upon going to college in the US, the biggest culture shock for him was how little respect his peers had for their parents. He’d say things like, “Asian kids honor their parents a lot more; I’m like them.”
(Of course, we’ve always encouraged him to follow his own path, so obeying his parents hasn’t been hard. If we’d tried to run his life for him and make him pursue goals he didn’t have any passion for, perhaps he’d be more inclined to rebel.)
So I’ve been thinking about this a bit.
Basically my thought is that raising kids blows. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids and my wife (I suppose), but in many ways, it fucking sucks and I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and chop off my own dick.
Covid has created an interesting A:B test in our lives. Being of advanced income, we purchased a “summer house” near my wife’s family in the country. Whether the “summer house” or our “city apartment” is the primary residence vs a “vacation home” or “pied-à-terre” is a separate debate.
The point being, every so often, I find cause to stay at our city residence while the family is out in the country. And truth be told, I like it better. I do what I want. I watch what I want on TV. I go out to eat where and when I want. I do my work without interruption until it’s time to stop. Like, it’s really nice and stress free.
Throw my wife in the picture, and she get super obsessive compulsive about everything. And then her stupid mom comes around and gets super obsessive compulsive and the two get into a passive aggressive power struggle. And my wife gets all stressed out because the kids don’t listen and act all rambunctious and her analyst at worked fucked up some shit and yadayadaya…maybe I’ll just say “fuck it” and stay here.
The point being this. Objectively speaking, if you give a 40 year old the choice of say…dealing with a couple of bratty teenagers and their teenager bullshit or go clubbing around Belmar, NJ as a “hot MILF” hooking up with random dudes…forgetting what you are “supposed to” do? I don’t know.
My biggest issue with this thread is it reminds me of… I don’t know, judging somebody because you don’t think they are grieving the death of a spouse/parent/etc “the right way”.
People are complicated, and not everybody looks at things the same way. Maybe she’s a shitty mom; maybe she’s not. But there is no “right” way to parent, because that same “people are complicated” applies to children, too.
Bleah, the computer ate a word from this sentence (inserted in bold) when I originally wrote it:
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As as “hot MILF” what would you rather be doing? As a “hot MILF” myself, I’d rather be at home watching Ancient Aliens than dealing with teenagers or clubbing for “random dudes”.
Everyone has their own reason for wanting to move away from their kids. I was going with my understanding of what the OP meant by “exciting beach town”.
I don’t know, of course, but it could be that Mom’s struggled with mental health issues while Momming. It happens.
And maybe, Mom’s not doing so well just now and everyone can see something that might help her. Like a more pastoral or exciting setting, or whatever. Hell, the beach always soothes me! And what if the solution everyone’s come to is for the kids to get into a good school, where they may indeed be insulated from Mom’s current struggle, get a good education, and Mom won’t feel badly. Maybe it’s closer to family, old friends or a Dr, that can provide support. Maybe a change is as good as a rest?
I guess I hesitate to judge someone harshly without knowing more. But as you can see, I CAN imagine a situation wherein this is a positive for those involved, even if it’s harshly judged by those with no knowledge of the struggle.
Would it be better, in my imaginary scenario, that she stick it out, out of misguided ‘not wanting to be judged harshly’, making everyone’s next few years, a shitshow? They can all see these will be important years for her kids, for getting into colleges etc.
I agree with this. Hard to judge without being in that person’s shoes. There’s enough variance in people’s reactions that I can’t possibly judge. Does it strike me as odd? Perhaps a little bit. It’s definitely not how I am. I like spending time with my kids still (they’re only 7 and 5) and the selfish part of me would keep them like this forever, and I would choose to stay with them forever. But perhaps I’m the weirdo for being this way. That said, I’ve known plenty of parents that were happy to have their kids out of the house at their earliest opportunity. I don’t necessarily think this is a horrible reaction. People are different, and I don’t really think there is a singular way parents should be (minus them being abusive, of course.) Maybe once my kids are teens, my attitude will change more towards this mom’s. I don’t know (though I doubt it.)
It may be entirely a matter of interpretation. OP sees a mom shipping her kids off to boarding school IN ORDER to enable a carefree, kid- free life at the beach, and I’d agree that this is not a mainstream “parental” thing to do.
But perhaps her children have the incredible opportunity to be accepted at an excellent boarding school in order to achieve THEIR educational and social goals. Maybe the mother is super excited that they may get this opportunity, while she gets an equally exciting opportunity to move to a place she’s always wanted to live, but couldn’t because of the children. Maybe the school system sucks, or childcare is scarce or unaffordable, or the kids resisted leaving their school and their friends, or the rent is too high for a place large enough for the entire family, or other perfectly good reasons. Now the mother can do something she has wanted to do, and she is happy. It doesn’t necessarily mean she’s abandoning her kids or doesn’t want them around.
I adore my children, and I even like them as people. But I was thrilled when they went to summer camp for a week or spent time at grandma’s, because everyone needs a break now and then. When it came time to pick a college I encouraged them to choose an in-state one, but not one in our city. I wasn’t trying to get rid of them, but I wanted them to experience life “on their own” and to learn to rely on themselves with the safety net of me being a few hours away if they needed me.
I didn’t cry when they left. I was excited about a new chapter in their lives (as well as my own), a little jealous (I loved college), a little sad (they’re amazing people I actually like spending time with), and I could see how people I talked to could very well have gotten the impression that I forced them to go away to school instead of letting them go to community college and live at home, and the impression that I was delighted to finally be free. It’s kinda true. But it’s not the whole story.
You get to play bachelor for a while. I have the same opportunity you do from time to time, a week home with the cats while the wife and son are in the country, it’s refreshing, for both of us. Though, I don’t really want to be a bachelor again, when I was one, it was OK I suppose, but I’m not under the illusion that it would be a blast to be a single 50 year old.
What’s odd about this coworker is that the boarding school idea is all about her freedom, not her kids needs or desires. Maybe that just what the OP is getting to see, but it’s a bit off putting.
Lord knows I would have been happy to go to boarding school as a kid (I had a perfectly fine home life – it just all seemed like a fun adventure to me) and my wife practically begged to be sent to boarding school between her freshman and sophomore years in high school (and got her wish) and enjoyed and thrived there. Like you said, maybe the kids want it, too.
Sounds like my own mother, perfectly normal and loving mom up until I got to around 15 and suddenly every single thing in her brain changed and she suddenly wanted to divorce my dad and move to the other side of the country and told us she never see any of us again. She had bizarre logic and acted like she had never actually existed n modern society by thinking if she divorced my blue collar job dad she could get the judge to award her MILLIONS in divorce compensation so she’d never have to work again and she could flirt with guys and drink every single night in some party town at the age of 45. She actively told me how much she hated being around me and that I “was holding her back from attaining true happiness”.
Up until about age 11 my wife was extremely protective and nurturing to my son. Something changed about that time. She divorced me and only did the bare minimum if that as a mother from that point on. She was struggling with alcoholism which I am sure was a factor.
Eh. I would have enjoyed boarding school. My sister and I both worked hard to finish high school a year early so we could go to college and learn about stuff that actually interested us.
I kinda think that a lot of people who have kids probably shouldn’t. You’re not doing the planet any favors; there’s already too many of us. If you don’t want to see the job through to the end, maybe just channel that energy into playing some other role in an existing child’s life. Of course if you miscalculated your parental desire and the kids are already here, I suppose you just have to make the best of it, and maybe delegating some of the work is the best way to do that.
I’ll admit my perception is colored by a good friend whose parents shipped her off to boarding school when they divorced and remarried. She didn’t want to go, it wasn’t intended for her benefit, and from her perspective it sucked only a little less than being totally ignored at home. So while I recognize the existence of kids who actually do want to go and thrive at boarding school, I wouldn’t assume that’s what’s going on when all I hear from the parent is how excited they are to move to the beach.
For what it’s worth, I’ll leave this here. I can imagine parents steering clear of this. Adult Kids Who Stay At Home
I kind of feel like it might be more “mainstream” among the sort of parents who send their kids to boarding schools.