Love You Forever

“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.”

When my children were small, a favorite book was Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. I thought back to that little book as I read so many posts lately that lamented the end of motherhood, a future day when your child will miraculously need you not at all. Many mommas shared first day of school photos and wanted to stop time. One momma expressed that being a mom would end when her children went to college, and yet another momma wanted to make summer amazing because she had only 18 of them with her kids. I have felt all those emotions right there with you, but 25 years into motherhood, I’ll tell you the real story, friends: being a momma never ends while your children walk this earth. It just takes on new forms.

The Early Years

You are in charge. At least you feel that way 99% of the time. You make the rules about where your children go, when they eat and sleep, who they play with, and so much more. You know their world and how you fit into it as their mom. Your role is meeting physical demands much of your days, and that requires stamina and patience like you never imagined you had. For me, this was a place of confidence as a mom because I could identify the need and meet the demand. Yes, the days will wear you out, but you can end them with giggles during bath time, snuggles while reading stories, discoveries of every kind around you. You are tired, but you are introducing your child to the world on your terms. All of that world was within my control until it changed. I remember vividly when my son, now 25, started kindergarten. Up until then, he had been in daycare settings that recorded his every move. I loved my daily record of what he ate, when he slept, and when he pooped. I knew everything about his days until he went to school. I cried that first day when he came home with a list of supplies needed but nothing about if he had pooped. Seriously. That was my worry — not knowing my son’s bathroom routine that day. Little did I know, the journey to unknowing was just beginning.

The Middle Years

You are hanging on. The roller coaster ride from kindergarten through high school is truly full of exhilarating highs and devastating lows. You are navigating a path from complete dependence to incomplete independence, and every curve presents a new perspective. During elementary school, I quickly learned that I was no longer choosing my children’s friends. Their friends used to be my friend’s children or children we knew from church, but now they were children from different neighborhoods with different parenting. My son, in particular, always seemed to choose the friends I was least likely to warm to (including girlfriends), and my daughter seemed to attract every wayward lost soul in the entire school. Suddenly, I was not in control and I was faced with making decisions about how much I wanted to give up and give in. Should she spend the night with the friend whose parents I had never met? Should I ask about older siblings and what parents will be there? Do I need to worry about weapons? But these questions were just warm ups to the ones faced as we moved into high school.

Now the lack of control was even more in my face because they could drive, they carried computers in their pockets, they were by nature more secretive and less forthcoming. Argh. A perfect storm of testing independence with releasing control makes for challenging conversations and emotional storms. I attempted to make rules that I was willing to enforce, but here’s the thing about raising teenagers: they are 100 times more exhausting than toddlers. They are relentless in pushing emotional buttons and resisting behavior change and they can outlast you, especially if you are a single parent with no backup strength. When you have no one to tag team and say, “I’m worn out from repeating myself, you take over,” your teens become 200 times stronger. With both of my children, we reached utter exhaustion and frustration in their junior year of high school. My son demanded to go live with his dad to finish high school, and my daughter and I fought bitterly the entire school year, culminating in a dramatic clash where she moved to my sister’s house for a week and dis-invited me from all end-of-year activities. Those junior year experiences taught me that clinging to the shreds of my control did nothing but make all of us miserable. But those experiences were just trying to prepare me for the letting go that was to come.

The Later Years

You are available. They turn 18 and they are legally adults, which they will tell you often. Yes, they have many legal rights (and you need to understand those), and they can make many decisions for themselves, but they are still seeking your input and approval. When my son turned 18, the first legal right he exercised was getting a tattoo because he no longer needed my permission. I’ve lost count now of how many tattoos he has because he sees them as expressions of his personality — and I’m still working on appreciating them as such. I know you’re likely thinking that you’ll put a stop to that for your child, that your child will do exactly what you expect because you’ll find a way to enforce it. Yes, you probably can. I know many parents who threaten to cut off financial support if an expectation is not met. But I know very few who are willing to follow through with that level of punishment.

What you don’t know until you reach this stage is that you will do whatever you can to maintain a connection as they achieve adulthood. You know the moments when they ask things of you will become fewer and fewer so you revel in the moments when they do. My daughter, now a college student, called one Saturday and started the conversation by saying, “If I tell you something, you promise not to get mad?” My response, unchanged since middle school, was, “I cannot promise that but I promise to listen.” I listened, I laughed, and I shared my thoughts on safely navigating college. Just this month, my son, finally off the payroll at age 25, asked me to go car shopping with him. We spent an entire day at the dealership, opening his eyes to the amazing world of credit scores, compounding interest, and contracts. My boy, who had soundly rejected all my wisdom through the years, looked at me at the end of the day and said, “I couldn’t have managed this without you. Thanks.”

My children still need me to be their momma. They need me to be the voice they hear when they are making tough decisions and when they are celebrating significant milestones. They want me to understand them in ways that no one else can and to use that understanding to guide them when they seek guidance. I am in charge of only me now. I am connected to them in ways that are tangible, like college tuition and co-signed loans, but I am focused on the intangible connections that will always bind us: memories, life lessons, requested advice, future hopes and dreams.

Mommas, they won’t always be your babies, but they will always be yours. Guide them, enjoy them, set them free. Love them forever.