Learning to be Silent

I am at the point in my child rearing where I must learn to be silent. I have dropped my second of three girls at college over the weekend and I found myself biting my tongue and voicing my concerns in question form to avoid making a frontal attack, things like “Do you need my help?” That’s interesting, is that a new way of doing things?”  My all time favorite was to my middle daughter when we were on our way to drop her at college; it went like this, “So…what is your expectation for how today should go?” I thought it best to work within her plan so that when I left her there she would be thinking nice things about me.

My job is phasing out…the mothering and maternal teaching phase is pretty much over. Sure I still have my youngest here at home for another two years but she is pretty much already kicking the gate ready to bolt. In my quest to be loving and understanding to my youngest after dropping her sister at college, I did my best to be dotting and loving only to have it thrown back in my face when my youngest said to me, “MOM, ever since we dropped Aly off at school you have been talking to me like I am three year old!” Mind you the ever since part was less than twenty four hours, that is barely enough time to do any real damage to her, so now I have taken the direct approach and she will just have to live with it. I still have two years with her, so I am not fully invested in being silent with her yet anyway.

As for the other two, I am struggling to be there as a Mom and not verbalize my concerns about decisions and choices they might be making. Even in question form some things are just too hard to talk about with your children. You see your kids making choices that you recognize as old pattern behaviors that have caused them trouble in the past and there is nothing you can do. You stand there thinking NOOOOOOOO and you say “Oh really, wow!” out loud. Let’s face it they really do not care if we agree, if they want to do something they are going do it period end of story.

The truth that we Mom’s do not learn until we are Mom’s is that you never stop worrying. You never stop wondering if you did the right thing with your kids and finally once you reach a certain point in raising them, they only learn from driving their own lives. Well at least you hope they learn there are some that are determined to slam into the same wall over and over again. I have decided that my energy is better spent worrying about me. I have enough going on that a little time and attention towards me sounds like a great plan. I am sure that I will step into trouble and say the wrong thing but over all I am fully committed to learning to be silent.