Watching our kids grow up can feel like a roller coaster – ups and downs, twists and turns, drops you never anticipated. At times it is exhilarating, other times excruciating. When they are little, we think it’ll be so nice when they’re older because the younger years are oh-so physically exhausting. When they are older, we think how we’d love to squeeze those chubby baby cheeks just one more time or hear that toddler giggle deep from their belly fill the room.
I’m not one to tell moms of littles “you’re gonna miss this” or “it goes so fast” because I
remember all too well just how exhausted I was – deep down to my bones – and spread so thin trying to be a stay-at-home mom to three kids who often all needed me at the exact same time. There was only one of me for crying out loud, but I had to do it all for everyone. Those were hard years and those encouragements from others really weren’t helpful.
Yes, of course, there was so much beauty, I cherish the memories, and I’d go back in a heartbeat (but, if I’m honest, maybe just for a day…). But I get the hard, so I can totally relate to moms wishing for the next stage.
As I’m now that mom with the older kids, though, staring at only four more short years with my oldest, my heart aches with all the feels from both worlds. How I long to extend every moment with my youngest, my 8 year old, because it does indeed go so fast. How I long for the invention of a machine to slow time to a crawl so that my new freshman in high school might not leave me for a long, long time.
Yet, parenting is still so exhausting. How can I be so exhausted, yet also want this stage of my life to stretch out as long as possible? It’s a paradox I think only parents can understand, and for some reason, especially moms.
Tweens and teens are exhausting, too – just in a different way than littles. Their emotions are on their own roller coaster and you’re trying to help them through it while simultaneously on your own. Talk about disorienting! They still need you as much as ever, yet they want you to believe they don’t. They want to be independent, but they want you close by just in case (even if they don’t admit it!).
And the hardest part for us moms, I think – they start leaving behind the hobbies and activities they’ve done for so many years, sports fields and teams you’ve come to see as a second home while cheering them on, things that you saw as part of who they were.
They are trying to make time and margin for new friends, new stresses like more homework and studying, and possibly even new identities. They are trying to figure out if that person or athlete they’ve been all these years really is who they are or who they want to be. Maybe a new passion has begun to stir, and they want to see where it leads. Maybe they’re tired of that person or activity and are longing for a reinvention.
All of this, as normal as it is, can be so hard on moms. We love them every step of the way, so we have spent years loving that person or athlete or whoever they were. We’ve loved going to those activities and watching them immerse themselves in that past hobby. You mean we have to be done watching them or enjoying that because, without much warning perhaps, they’ve decided to move on??
The gut punches moving to each new stage are real. But, the good news – the part I’m slowly figuring out – is that every new stage has so much good, too. Watching them rediscover who they are or pursue a new passion can be so exciting. As their parent, you get a front row seat to them stumbling through this journey and coming out the other side. Encouraging them and allowing them the freedom to let one thing go as they pursue the next will likely have them coming to you for advice, asking you to give feedback on their new endeavor and including you on the journey because they feel seen, known and loved.
As you join them on the journey through the next stage, find ways to meet them where they are. Just when my heart breaks that my daughter is done with one of her things, or one of “our things”, I realize that she is seeking me out in new, more grown-up ways. 
Maybe she wants to go to Starbucks together to get work or studying done. Maybe she wants to work out together, go skiing just the two of us, or do a Mud Girl race (even if it just might kill me!).
When kids move into a new stage and beg you to do something with them, don’t pass up the chance! Leaving the last stage is bittersweet, but the next stage can be amazing, too.
