Showing all posts tagged independence

In Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, Uncategorized

Happy 18th Baby Girl

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Of parenting, Gretchen Rubin said, “The days are long but the years are short.” This was a guiding principle for me when my kids were young. Now that they are both teenagers, I find the days to be as short as the years. Once they were out of the preschool season, time seemed to speed up, like it was set to fast forward.

Now Ava is about to turn 18. I’ve been sad about it since September, when I found a new counsellor to work with as I attempt to prepare for her to move out of our house. It takes me a long time to manage change. When she leaves for university in late August, I want to be past my own complicated feelings and into excitement for her as she launches into her own life. I can glimpse this possibility, but I’m not there yet, so I’m glad I started a year in advance.

All I know for sure right now is that I will really, really miss her. We all will. On the weekends, I listen to her and William laughing from the basement as they play Jedi: Fallen Order on his Xbox. Each interaction with Ava feels more precious now. Sharper, more defined, and meaningful. Our house will have a gaping hole in it when she’s not here every day. I find it really hard to even imagine.

At the same time, because life is endlessly complicated and nuanced, I’m thrilled to see Ava inching into her own independence. It’s an exciting time, with university acceptances and academic excellence scholarships and a new driver’s license and a sneaking sense of pride that maybe we haven’t done too badly after all in raising her. My best friend’s mom always said that the goal of parenting is to take a dependent baby and turn them into an independent adult. By that measure, I’m incredibly proud of Ava on this milestone 18th birthday.

She’s fun, warm, smart, responsible, goofy and empathetic. Our lives are so much better because she’s in them. I try to remind myself that she’s not going into outer space, only to university, but it’s still a massive sea change for our family. And I know that many other families have done this and survived it, but thinking about your child moving out one day in the future and walking through it are two different things. But we are right on the edge of this change, peering out at it, and I feel so many things at once.

You are so loved, baby girl. Watch out, world. Ava’s finishing up grade twelve, in this never-ending groundhog day pandemic, and then she’s jumping into her adult life with intense enthusiasm and spirit. It will be a fascinating adventure, and we are here for you always. Happy 18th birthday!

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth

Releasing Those We Love

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

When I practice releasing those I love, I think about Cheryl Strayed’s beautiful phrase, “Acceptance is a small, quiet room.” Those words soothe me, every single time.

Today I need to hold this idea close, as William left this morning with 70 over-excited grade 7 kids on an outdoor ed camping adventure. My son is not a person who enjoys rugged outdoor activities, new culinary tastes, sleeping away from home or doing anything remotely challenging or stressful. These factors all added up to why he desperately needed to go.

When I dropped William off with his sleeping bag, pillow and suitcase in the gym, one of the grade 7 teachers said to me, “These kids are anxious because they think about stuff instead of actually doing it.” I’ve been spouting a version of this for years and intellectually I know it to be true, but the emotional pull of our children’s fear is a powerful magnet for a parent.

When the trip was first discussed at a meeting early in 2019, several parents gasped audibly when the teachers said NO cell phones would be allowed on this outdoor ed trip. We’ve all become accustomed to reaching our kids to check in or help them solve problems. The concept of the kids being on their own for three days is a harder sell in our texting world than it would’ve been in my own childhood thirty-some years ago.

I know he’s going to do fine. They all will. At thirteen, kids need to practice building memories and skills apart from their parents. Jason was willing to sign up as a chaperone, but William insisted he wanted to go on his own. So we took him at his word, even as the trip drew closer and his anxiety began to bloom.

These next three days are a wonderful opportunity for me to release William. He’ll need to solve his own problems, create his own memories, confront his own fears. We’ve helped him get to this point, and we believe he’s ready for this step (even if he’s not entirely sure). I will continue to think about him, wondering how his activities, meals and bedtimes are going, but I will stay in that small, quiet room of acceptance.

As parents, we have to practice for the next stage along with our beloved kids. We cannot hold on, begging them to stay small and dependent. The job is to nurture a dependent baby and turn them into an independent adult. Each step the parent and the child takes toward this goal is important, so that when the day comes for them to pack up and move out, we have all improved at releasing those we love to find their own way.

In Culture, Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth

Letting Go

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Letting Go

Ava went to a 3 day leadership retreat with her school this week. It was for the student government to plan events for the upcoming school year. She brought the paper home the first week of classes, her face alight with enthusiasm, and I felt, for a single moment, as though I was looking into the future with her away more than she’s at home.

It was both wonderful and sad, all at the same time (doesn’t that describe a lot of parenting experiences?). Our children grow up and away from us. Over time, we get lulled into a certain type of normalcy, with them coming and going, laughing, making messes, driving us up the wall. Then you begin to  realize that quite soon, they will fly from our nests and begin their own adventures.

I get weary when I hear parents complaining about how much they miss the good old days when their kids were babies. This is not a post about that, for I don’t pine for that bygone era. Our kids are meant to grow older and more interesting and become who they really are. This process is fascinating and stimulating and I have no interest in holding it back.

But it does go by fast. If we do the work of parenting correctly, we are to take a dependent baby and turn that baby into an independent adult. This is the job posting every one of us signed up for when we chose to have children. Some days I find it easy to enjoy the fruit of my labours as a mom when I watch my son and daughter navigating the world on their own. Occasionally I feel as if I’m preparing them well for the rigours of our modern society.

Then there are the other days. The ones where I realize that in four short years Ava will be ready to start university. In two years she will be driving (our Alberta friends can see their teens driving now at fourteen but no such luck for Ava in BC). In grade nine there will likely be invitations to parties and events where we will need to practice, as parents, setting reasonable boundaries for her and then letting go and trusting that she will be safe.

At a certain point, we must trust our precious kids to make their own decisions. This is the preparation they need to be able to succeed in life. To bounce back from hardship, they first must experience hardship. We cannot protect them forever. We should not be protecting them forever.

So much of the job of parenting involves getting out of the way. Moving past our fear and believing that we’ve laid the groundwork for our children to discern right from wrong, to lead instead of follow, to learn from their mistakes.

I am incredibly proud of our fourteen-year-old daughter. She texted a few times from the retreat, happy updates about winning a game of Manhunt in the dark and the pouring rain by hiding in the brambles and dirt, eating pizza for lunch, staying up late chatting with her roommates from older grades.

I remember these types of things from my teen years. They are a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. We want to support Ava in these adventures and experiences, but it does help to talk openly about what it feels like to be the parent instead of the child.

How do you practice letting go of your kids as they move toward independence and adulthood?

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Relationships, Uncategorized

Back to School

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Back to School

Can you hear that sound? It’s silence, the kind that falls after parents have ushered their beloved offspring to a new year of school (well, you might hear cheering from some and weeping from others – both moms and kids – but here the biggest joy of all is the QUIET).

Other years, when my kids were smaller, I used to feel a bit melancholy on their first day. I would get so used to them being home over the long days of summer that I would miss them for the first week.

Now that Ava is grade nine and William is grade six it’s a different experience. They need to return to structure and see their friends. Both of them require challenges, apart from staring at inane Youtube videos all day long. My kids may have mixed feelings about going back to school, but I can see how necessary it is for them.

As our children get older, things change. For Ava, who has four years left of high school before embarking on her own life away from us, these precious last years under our roof take on a fresh significance. She is supposed to grow in independence and begin constructing an identity outside of our family and it’s important for us to support her in this quest.

We have good friends who just said goodbye to both of their university-age daughters. They are now officially empty-nesters. I’ve been texting with my friend about this process and I know it will be here all-too-soon for us as well. The key is to be present and to notice the stage that is happening right now, but also to transition into a more hands-off parenting style so we are all able to celebrate the coming separation instead of fighting it or mourning it.

William is in that in-between age of eleven. He’s not quite ready for the angst of the teen years but also not really a child. It’s a delicate stage, where one foot is on each side of a divide. He longs to be older but also wants to remain young and safe. We are working on encouraging him to step out of his comfort zone and to take more risks. School helps with this.

Every parent-child relationship is different and will require planning and strategy in order to find success. The beginning of September can be a particularly raw time. It’s exciting in one sense and scary in another.

As parents, we get to practice letting go of our children once again. This is their time: to make new friends, to cry and have their feelings hurt, to take risks and soar, to be embarrassed, to learn that if the first five experiments fail you can keep trying until you get where you want to go.

Happy back to school season to all parents and kids. May it be a marvellous year of discovery, compassion, fun and important life lessons learned.

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Relationships

So Much to Celebrate

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
So Much to Celebrate

My daughter Ava is turning 14 and like most parents, I’m feeling nostalgic. It’s so easy to get lost in the memories of her big baby grin, how cute she looked in white Osh Kosh baby shoes and a pink-and-white striped dress, or fresh from a bath, snuggly and warm in her fuzzy footy sleepers.

All of these memories are good, but nostalgia is a fairly useless exercise. When we wallow too much in it, we miss what is right in front of us. A 14 year old is a radically different creature from an infant, or the eager 5 year old starting school, or the 10 year old crying about how mean some girls can be.

Ava is, of course, made up of every age she’s ever been, the way all of us are, but the job at hand is to celebrate her 14 year old self instead of pining for what’s now in the past. And there is so much to celebrate.

She was such an easy baby, toddler, young child and older child that many people said to me, “Just you wait until she’s a teenager. If they are easy when they are young, they will be a handful when they are older.” It’s not true yet and I know anything can still happen but all signs point to Ava continuing on this responsible path.

It sounds banal to say how proud I am of her, but the bottom line is that she has always made the whole mothering gig look easy for me. She is her own true self while still being generous to others. She is a fierce feminist with way more courage than I ever had in my teens to speak out about what she believes in.

Helping her reach for her acting dream has been immensely satisfying to me. I feel as if I’m picking up a thread that began to unravel in my early twenties and now Ava is sewing it into something meaningful and worthwhile. Nothing in this life is wasted. It comes back to us, when we least expect it, in a different form. It means so much to watch her find success in this beautiful pursuit of performance art.

As parents, we must continually practice letting go of our beloved children. We do not own them. They are not ours. They have their own lives and dreams and passions. We facilitate, we advise, we stay close for when they need us. But we also practice launching them into their own independence and refusing to be afraid of how it will all turn out.

Mistakes are how we grow, no matter what age and stage we are at. Learning to risk and accepting that failure is tied to success is an important part of the parenting journey. I can’t wait to see where Ava goes next. I love the person she is and is becoming and I’m proud of the relationship we’ve built.

It’s hard to wrap my brain around only having another 4 years where she will be living under our roof for sure. But the goal of parenting is to take a dependent baby and turn them into an independent adult. I feel like we are on our way to seeing this goal be a reality and that is worth celebrating.