Many parents feel lost when their children grow up and leave
home – but it can mark the beginning of a new-found freedom.
Many parents at home looking after small children feel as if
they will never again have time to themselves. They long for the freedom to go
out just when they want to, without complicated arrangements with friends or
babysitters. Later, with older children, they may sometimes resent the demands
for food at odd hours and the piles of dirty washing. Despite this, or perhaps
because of it, many parents feel an emptiness, which is hard to fill when the
children leave home.
If we can see bringing up children as just one stage in our
lives, we are less likely to be frustrated by the limitations it imposes, or to
be saddened when it ends. The more we
have relaxed and enjoyed our children, the more we are likely to see their
growing up and leaving home as a satisfactory achievement, rather than as
something to be longed for or regretted.
Widening Your Experiences
The experience of having children and responding to the
first a babies, then later as adolescents and adults, can make a great
contribution to our own maturity. But, of course, we are never just parents; we
are people in our own right, just as our children are. Although we need to give
our children lots of time and attention, we also need to save some of our
energy for the world outside the home.
Try to maintain contact with old friends and to make new
ones. Keep up your interests, especially those that take you beyond the home,
and where possible envelop new ones. The more experience you have of the world
outside the home, the more interesting you will be, to both yourself and them.
The less dependent you are on you children for fulfilment, the more you will
enjoy their company - not only while they are at home but also later when they
have left. They will see you not just as a parent but as a person with ideas
and doubts, faults and virtues, someone they can turn to and confide in.
But however varied your life, there will inevitably be a gap
when your children leave home. Not only is there less cooking and shopping,
they are no longer there to talk to or enliven the house. Even if you complain
when they turn up the volume on the radio, you may be surprised just how much
you actually miss all the noise when it is no longer there.
Rediscovering Your Partner
For some this can be a time for rediscovering their
relationship with their partner, going out and doing things together as a
couple rather than as a family. For others, especially single parents, this is
not possible, and parting with children may be an even greater wrench. The
house may, quite literally, be silent without them.
The best time to face up to your children leaving is not
when they go, but several years earlier while you still have an important role
as a parent, though many of your responsibilities have eased. Now is the moment
to look at yourself and decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.
Try to see the years ahead as full of opportunities which you can really enjoy and
make the most of –t hen you will be able to accept your children’s departure
more easily, when it comes.
