Is This What a Midlife Crisis Looks Like?

This middle part of parenting where my kids aren’t babies any more but they’re also not adults is absolutely rocking my world.

Teenagers. I have two teenagers. And you might not think going from one teen to two is a big deal but you would be wrong. The kids? They’re fine.

Me? Very not fine.

I was sitting on our deck on Saturday, listening to the neighbors’ kids playing the kind of make-believe games that are created on the spot, the rules changing on the fly as quickly as their imaginations can think up something new.

And I realized I can’t remember the last time one of my kids played that way. (To be fair, a pandemic did kind of steal a few of years of their childhood, but the point remains…)

They’re teenagers now. There’s no more make-believe.

And I get it. I really do. The assignment is to help them grow up, to help them become whomever they’re going to become. And I know we’re in that process where they’re…becoming.

But this moment—the one where I realize all the things that happened for the last time that I didn’t take note of because I didn’t know it would be the last time—has arrived way faster than I expected and wow, I was/am not ready.

In the beginning of parenting, our kids need us for everything—diaper changes, meals, emotional stability during the-cracker-is-broken or why-is-the-cup-yellow meltdowns.

The years pass in a blur of barely sleeping and we wake up one day to find that the house is eerily quiet until noon (or later) on Saturdays and there are way, way fewer meltdowns over broken crackers. (The yellow cup is probably somewhere in their room.)

I heard Gabby and Ben Blair talk about that transition this year at Mom 2.0. Well, technically, they were answering a question about what discipline had looked like in their home and what they wrote about it in their book, The Kids Are Alright. But I didn’t realize until right then that the goal of parenting is actually so much bigger than just getting our kids to adulthood.

It’s building relationships with them that they want to continue with us as adults. We have so many years beyond their childhood to enjoy their company, which is really cool.

Like…if we do a good enough job at this parenting thing, they’ll still like us and want to hang out with us maybe, and that’s wild to think about when you’re also in the middle of feeling like you’re losing them.

I know the pulling away is normal. But part of me misses being needed, even though I know not being needed so much means I’m probably (hopefully) doing an okay job.

I mean, I enjoy being able to sleep in on Saturdays or lounge around and read for an afternoon while they’re with friends or occupying themselves. But there’s something tender and a little sad about it too.

I know I’ll always be their mom, but I mean I’m not a mom of littles anymore, and I’m not always sure I know how to be a mom of teenagers.

I don’t know what firsts—or lasts—to look out for. To commit to memory forever.

Because I don’t want to miss anything, but I know they have to write their own stories. And in those stories, I’ll be a supporting character instead of a principle part of the cast.

So I guess I’m also realizing that I don’t know much about myself and who I am when I’m not their mom.

What’s my story?

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