Mothers and Their Grown Daughters and Sons

This is a story about mothers of grown kids and almost grown kids, and about some of the misunderstandings that can occur. It's not a short story, and it's not an exciting one. It's about day-to-day issues and ordinary people. It's also about one ordinary person's journey to maturity.

It was inspired by my own increasing awareness of some issues that go on with a certain segment of the population, and by my own wish to increase (at least in some small way) some understanding between the generations.

I'm reluctant to even post this story, because I worry that anyone who takes the time to read the whole thing may get to the end, feeling very short-changed and robbed of time he'd expected would be better spent. Still, in all its "ordinary-ness", I think there are at least a few ideas that may be worth sharing.

So that you may decide whether this is a subject worth spending any time reading about, I'll tell you this story is about mothers of grown or almost grown kids, and the generation and experience gap that challenge those relationships

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Sometimes the relationship between mothers and grown kids, or almost-grown kids, can be such a challenge. Even when there is solid, strong, love to keep the relationship from completely disintegrating forever, there are times when fractures to that relationship never quite heal. Is there ever a way for mothers and grown kids to overcome that seemingly insurmountable gap between age, role, and differences in beliefs?

For example, there's Meg. Meg is a quiet person who doesn't really say what's on her mind, mostly because she doesn't want to hurt or worry anyone. If Meg were tell you what she's thinking sometimes, when she's alone in her room, listening to her music; these might be the things she has on her mind:

"Nobody understands me. Why are so people so judgmental? Why do people form opinions of other people, based on what they wear or look like? Just because I'm not their age, they think I don't know anything. Why do they expect me to be perfect? Just because I don't think like they do, and just because I don't think in some narrow-minded, in-the-box, way that they think, why can't they see that maybe - just maybe - THEY'RE the ones who are wrong!"

and Meg's thoughts continue...

"They don't even see what a decent person I am. They think I'm stupid. Just because I look younger than I am that doesn't mean I don't know how to run my own life. They accuse me of stuff I don't do, and they think I'm things that I'm not! They think I should be doing chores that they ought to be doing, themselves. They act like I'm Cinderella and they're the step-sisters! They don't like my hair-style. They don't approve of my clothes. I can't stand it. Sometimes I just feel like leaving, but I can't do that right now. Oh well, at least I have my friends to hang out with. They're the only ones who understand me. It's just too bad family has to be like it does, because a person's family are the ones who ought to know him and understand him best - but that's not how families, especially mine, are. They just don't know what's it's like for me."

Meg isn't really a troubled girl. Most of the time she just goes along with having these feelings that are so common to people her age. She'll be fine, most likely. It's just that sometimes she feels pretty alone. While people are, of course, individuals, Meg is very much like a lot of other people her age.

The "they" Meg refers to aren't just her parents, either. The "they" she's thinking about sometimes seems pretty much like the whole world (other than, perhaps, some of her close friends). As I said, Meg isn't really a troubled girl. Meg is a 54-year-old mother of grown kids; and while back when she was a teen she sometimes didn't feel very understood by family, Meg has been shocked to discover the degree to which she so often feels alone and misunderstood at the age she is today. Of course, it really isn't about her age. Meg's trouble being understood and not feeling alone pretty much stems from her role as mother to grown children. While the "they" Meg refers to can include what seems like the whole world, much of the time that "they" refers to Meg's own kids, their friends, or one relative or another who has judged Meg in a way she finds unfair, as a result of the fact she's been judged on what someone else imagines Meg to be thinking - not by what she really is thinking.

Not all mothers of grown kids are generally well adjusted, perfectly fine, people like Meg is. There are, of course, mothers who have personality disorders or some other problem that stops them from being "regular mothers". For the most part, though, a lot of mothers are very similar in a lot of ways to Meg.

The World Still Has Much to Learn About Women

With as little understanding of women as there remains (Women's Movement or not) among the general population, many people wouldn't see what I (a mother of grown kids, myself) see when I look at someone like Meg or any other mothers of grown kids.

For example, mothers are often more understanding of, and knowledgeable about, other people's emotional needs. Fathers, sometimes, only seem to think in terms of food, shelter, and money for college  (Yes, these are blanket generalizations and not intended to be statements about every mother and every father.  Still, we all know this is how it is in a lot of families.). If a mother decides the family can eat a little more macaroni this week in order to let her daughter have a new dress for her one-and-only senior prom, that's the kind of choice that is sometimes seen as "an emotional one". What a lot of people don't understand is that this choice is a reasoned, logical, one; because this mother remembers being a senior in high school, how exciting it was to go out and buy her gown, and how important the prom was to her. She may have reasoned out that her daughter has always been such a good girl, is kind, and really doesn't deserve to be the one among her friends who has a second-hand dress. This mother may be aware that some hurts from youth stay with people and even change who they are. She may have reasoned, too, that she knows how much her daughter has always trusted her to try to prevent some hurts in this world; and she may have reasoned that eating a little more macaroni for a week or two is well worth not letting her daughter down on this important occasion. This mother isn't someone who has never said, "no". She's just someone who decided this one, important, event was something she didn't want to make her daughter do without for. The point is, this mother's decision wasn't an emotional one. It was reasoned out with a solid understanding of emotional needs, and sense of responsibility to watch out for her child's emotional needs, weighing one cost against another, and prioritizing.

On top of all that, this mother was most likely thinking in terms of being an example for her daughter (and other children) of someone who knew how to "figure out a way to do things" even when there were challenges. Besides being an example of someone who didn't just sit back and do without, she thought her daughter would benefit by seeing how a little money-juggling can go a long way when it comes to money management.

The point is that this woman's husband (maybe even in an emotional response that came from his worries about money) may have thought the prom-dress decision was a purely emotional one, rather than one made by someone who had weighed out the monetary cost against other possible costs. In fact, this mother's daughter, herself, may not even have realized why her mother had made sure she got her new dress either. The daughter may have just assumed it was because her mother loves her and can always be counted on to try to make her happy.

Only So Many People Can or Will Ever Be Happy to Walk A Mile in Mom's Shoes

The problem for women, in general, is that there are a lot of things women, particularly mothers, do that nobody really understands. Men aren't likely to ever really be able to understand how a mother feels. Kids and adults without children don't know how mothers feel. Mothers of babies don't know how it's going to feel when they're mothers of ten-year-olds, and moms of ten-year-olds don't have a clue about how they'll feel when they're sixteen-year-old presents one challenge of another. It goes on and on, as far as I can tell - all the way to the time if/when a woman is a 100-year-old mother of a 75-year old "kid".

The things that other people can never understand about how a mother thinks or feels are too numerous to even imagine mentioning. Someone like Meg knows that the world is full of people of all ages and sexes and any other categorization by group who aren't understood. She's a grown-up. She's kind of OK with not being understood most of the time. What starts to kind of get to her, though, is when she hears or sees people talking as if she, or some other mother of grown kids she knows, is some kind of demented monster, a needy baby, a whiner, a b__tch, or some other nasty thing that some who doesn't have a clue has "assigned" to her. Meg isn't really "the martyr type". She's a strong person. Sometimes it's nothing more than her voice that offends someone. For example, if Meg speaks in a no-nonsense tone without any flowery words of sugar-coating, some people interpret that as being "The B Word". On the other hand, if Meg uses her more casual, usual, friendlier, tone to explain something negative; someone may interpret that as whining.

When Looking Out from the Work World and Into the Personal Life It's Pretty Much a Jungle Out There

There's another problem too: Meg, like most women, has always had a kind of un-intimidating demeanor and presence. It's not usually a problem for Meg at work, because people respect the good work she does and her friendly, but professional, demeanor. The work-world is full of women like Meg, and (unfortunately) sometimes it is by virtue of having the job in the first place that women tend to get respect from people like co-workers. In a world where things aren't quite as "hard-wiring driven" as they are in non-work settings, Beyond the safety and civilization that usually seems to reign in the more professional work settings, it's a jungle out there when it comes to family life and mothers, right from the time they become mothers.

Women often have to deal with husbands who think they know more than they really do about what thing or another (and wouldn't even consider the possibility that their wife may actually know more "even if she's a woman"). Some husbands have brought all the axes they had to grind with their own mother into their adult life and views about what the mother of their children should be. Then again, some husbands saw their mother as so perfect that unless their wife is a clone of her, she'll never measure up. Some husbands bring some mix of all this kind of stuff into adult life.

Then there are the mothers of mothers and the mothers of their husbands. That "previous-generation" set of mothers of kids who are now mothers, themselves, may have trouble realizing their 40-year-old "child" is, as I just said, 40 BLEEPING YEARS OLD!! Sometimes mothers will see their own child as lucky to have such a wonderful spouse. Sometimes they know their kid married a jerk. Either way, it's kind of lose/lose situation for the grown kid who's married to whoever she's married to. Most kids would like to think their mother thinks their spouse is lucky to have her wonderful son or daughter. It doesn't feel too great to have one's mother think his/her spouse is the "good catch". If someone's mother doesn't like his/her spouse, what mother has to either pretend she does (when everyone knows she really doesn't), or else be out in the open about her dislike for the person (in which case it makes things uncomfortable and nasty for all involved).

Mothers are often dealing with sisters-in-law or brothers-in-law they really wouldn't make a best friend out of (to say the least), and when the in-laws bring their kids and add them to another relatives' kids, there's usually hard feelings, resentment, and unspoken of judgment flying around in one direction of another.

One such judgment of Meg had been when she wouldn't allow her older son to tease one a younger sibling. Her husband, a first-born and six years older than his little brother recalled how "normal" it had been to "torment" his little brother. Having been one of the younger girls of the extended family, Meg, on the other hand, recalled how awful it had been to be tormented by some older, boy, cousins; and how she'd wondered why someone hadn't stopped them. As a result of this difference in thinking, Meg's husband hinted that she wasn't "allowing her sons to be boys". Meg, knowing that her younger son wasn't at all happy being "tormented" refused to change her thinking. Thus, there were hints that Meg was "too controlling". Word can spread from families to in-laws, of course.

Another example of a difference in parents' beliefs was Meg's request that the youngest children not walk around with their meals. Her children occasionally had little bags or containers of snacks that they carried around the house, but she didn't want plates and glasses spilled on the rug in the living room. It seemed reasonable enough to Meg that the children simply leave their plates on the table. She didn't mind if they'd leave and return. She just thought it was good practice that they leave plates on the table.

Meg's husband, on the other hand, recalled being a teen and eating on trays in front of the television in his parents' home. He thought it was a relaxed way for a family to share television time. What he didn't recall, however, was that his mother, too, had not allowed him to bring meals into the living room when he was a preschooler. Either way, her husband hinted that Meg was a little too unreasonable with the food-on-the-table rule. Why he didn't notice that the kids had pretty much made a mess of the backseat of Meg's car with their snack wrappers Meg didn't quite understand. To her, that should have been a sign of how relaxed she often was with the children. To her husband, all those other ways in which Meg took a more relaxed approach didn't count. All he knew was that he liked eating in front of the television as a kid, and he thought his kids should have the same "joy".

These are all just small examples of some of things that go on as part a mother's personal world, but this kind of complicated picture can pretty much be the backdrop against which mothers of younger kids live their lives, and the backdrop can eventually turn into a foundation for problems, accusations, and misunderstandings that become more complicated as kids, themselves, grow and become more complicated.

Kids, Moms, Relationships, and Worlds Grow More Complicated with Time

Speaking of "complicated", and getting back to Meg, Meg, herself, has become more complicated. While she was once "simply a mother with a baby" or "a mother with a preschooler", her time on Earth, experiences in general, and increasing varieties of experiences as a mother, have all kind of entered Meg's psyche and heart and turned her into someone so complicated even she, herself, has to sort out who she is and what she thinks a good part of the time. Meg still has that solid core she's always had, but layers and layers of years of mothering, living, worrying, and learning have wrapped around that core to the point where others can't always see it, and, in fact, Meg, herself, sometimes feels it's so far away she needs to find it somehow.

"Strong" Isn't Always "Overbearing" and "Nice" Doesn't Always Amount to "Too-Stupid-or-Too-Easy-Going Not to be So Nice".

Meg's always been a sensible and strong person who has no problem with new challenges or learning. What bothers Meg isn't that she's now got these layers and layers of additional living, loving, and learning to her. It's that's she's "still just Meg" and yet now it sometimes seems as if the whole world thinks she's a monster, a mental case, a wilting flower, or someone with a Napoleon Complex - sometimes all at the same time, and sometimes depending on who is doing the critical thinking. Meg knows she can't let what other people think of her bother her, but Meg also knows that she's a strong, kind, caring, person who isn't either a monster or a wilting and needy flower. It bothers her that "the world" so often treats her as if she's someone or something she isn't, and it really bothers her that it seems the world can so often have so much contempt and disregard toward mothers who have put in enough time being mothers that their children have grown.

Sometime it seems (at least to Meg) that the world has such compassion for mothers of babies and young children. Sometimes, too, it seems that the whole world absolutely loves little, gray-haired, mothers of kids in their 50's and 60's. It just seems like somewhere being that loved young mother with babies and that treasured elderly grandma with middle-age kids, herself, nobody likes those 45-65 age-range mothers with kids ranging from the teens to the 30's (plus or minus a few).

This isn't to say that life a picnic for elderly women, mothers, or men. There is an ignorance about elderly people that makes a lot of younger ones see them as "too fragile to be a threat" and "so old nobody has to pay any attention to them". At the same time, being the less robust elderly don't seem like much of a threat to anyone, they may at times enjoy the luxury of not being hated because they're someone's mother and because they're whatever age they happen to be. Neither is to say that life is a picnic for young mothers with babies. After all, they often have to deal with any number of older people watching, judging, and putting in their two-cents' worth on whatever they do or don't do. Life's not a picnic for anyone, when it comes down to it - and it may be far less of a picnic for women in some ways.

The thing is, though, that those mothers in Meg's age range don't have the appeal of being youthful and just starting out with those adorable little children in their adorable little infant seats and the latest stroller. People like new beginnings. Once things have settled in and are no long "new beginnings" (as with young children), it's all kind of taken for granted (not to mention not all that cute any longer).

Another problem for women is that some people don't seem to understand that woman who sometimes speaks in a no-nonsense tone and at other times speaks with the same tenderness she's so often shown to her kids shouldn't seem like a mystery. If she's mentioning to someone that she needs to cut back on grocery spending she may use one tone. On the other hand, she may generally use a more tender tone with most people most of the time. Then again, she may (imagine this) become angry at times and use a less than tender tone. It's all the same person. She isn't "possessed", and she doesn't have "multiple personalities". Maybe a lot of men have less variation in tone when they speak, but people like Meg can't (or may not want to) train her voice to be a monotonous-but-consistent tone. The thing about women like Meg is often that they don't want to tone down or alter the range of their own personalities just to be less of an apparent enigma to the rest of the world.

Sometimes Confidence Both Grows and Diminishes With Time

Women Meg's age usually have confidence in knowing what they've learned through experience, so they can seem surer of themselves than others often think they ought to. Only the mother of grown kids would know this, but having grown kids brings a whole new level and dimension of worry that someone like Meg never knew could even exist.
While they may have confidence of on type, women Meg's age have also had confidence in other areas eroded away with time, just by living in a world that (even when it isn't intended) undermines confidence, sometimes just by not having a clue that someone like Meg is the same person she's always been (and is so similar to so many other non-mothers and mothers alike in the world).

Meg once believed she couldn't possibly love her children more than she loved them when they were little, but then as they grew the love grew deeper and more real and more whole than it had been when it was, in some ways, about protecting and caring for a helpless baby (not to mention admiring how adorable he was).

Most "regular" mothers know that at the same time the love mothers have for children is growing bigger (and more complicated, as children grow), while more whole in so many ways; mothers are always in the process of "thinking from a mother's point of view" and "thinking from a person's point of view", as well as feeling from more than one point of view. On top of that, good mothers usually try to think and feel from their son's or daughter's perspective, and they're always trying to find some balance between being supportive and minding their own business.

So, When Did Meg Become So Misunderstood?

Now that her children are almost grown or all grown, Meg wonders how she has gone from "there to here", when it all started out so seemingly close to perfect; and when, more and more these days, her own children think they know what she thinks and why (when they don't), and sometimes it seems as if disgust with, and contempt for, mothers of grown kids can be found everywhere (whether in her own circles or circles in the larger world).

The Kind of Childhood So Many Kids Have

Meg got off to a good start in life. She had loving parents and didn't have many issues with them. There was a thing or two she thought they might have done differently, so she decided not to do those things when she had her own children. Generally, she thought her parents were great and wanted to be the same kind of parent to her own children.

She knew she wanted to be mature enough to be a mother before becoming one, but even before she had her children she thought about the kind of parenting philosophy she'd have, and thought about how she might handle one thing or other as a mother. That's something a lot of women do when they have a few years of adulthood before becoming mothers.

Meg had grown up to be a pretty well adjusted individual. Like most people, she preferred to have her own life under control, as opposed to out-of-control; but she had no wish to control anyone, including the children she would one day have. Her plan was to respect her children the way her parents had respected her, because she believed when parents respect children it's that much easier to expect similar respect in return. Besides, the independent-minded Meg knew she didn't want anyone else trying to control her, so certainly it wasn't her plan to try to control her future children. No. She was confident that if she did what was right she wouldn't have to try to control her children; because, as with Meg, herself, as a child; her children would not need or want to be controlled any more than she had been.

Meg's Early Days As A Mother

When her children were little Meg got little sleep because she was a conscientious mother and knew that sometimes mothers have to give up some sleep in order to get done what needs to be done. She was chronically exhausted but didn't mind, because, as she saw it, she'd waiting until she was mature enough to be able to exhausted without resenting it.

With the exception of those times when one of the children (or all of the children) were sick (when Meg found the worry almost unbearable), and with her chronic exhaustion (which didn't stop her from going like EverReady's "Energizer Bunny", Meg generally found having young children "a piece of cake". She was good with babies, so her babies barely ever cried. She understood her two-year-old's the way most average mothers understand theirs, so even though all may have been a little demanding, all was generally well. She built each relationship with each child during those preschool years, so by the time each child reached school age all remained fine. A school issue arose here or there, but Meg always watched out for what she believed was best for the children she knew so well.

Since before she'd had children, Meg had thought out her plan for being a happy, good natured, mother who let her children be as free as possible, while also teaching them how to behave well and respect themselves, others, and her. Her children were happy. She and the children laughed a lot. Life was pleasant, and it was so clear there were no problems between Meg and her children. Meg saw herself as a "team leader". The children respected her enough to be well behaved most of the time. Meg knew all kids mess up here or there and was inwardly proud to know she handled those mess-ups in a reasonable but responsible way.

Yes - when they were young, Meg's four kids were great kids. One of them had some trouble in school; but even with that, there were no particular behavior problems. People who knew Meg's kids thought they were nice, well behaved, kids who clearly came from a close family where there was lots of love. Meg had always known, though, that once kids become teens life (no matter how well behaved and well adjusted kids are) is no longer quite as simple as it can be when kids are young. As she had done before she'd had them, Meg spent a lot of time thinking about how she might handle one thing or another that may arise once the children were teens. She knew there would be surprises, and she knew she couldn't guess about what issues may crop up; but she thought it was sensible to give some thoughts to some of the more common issues that crop up with teens.

For the most part, Meg and her kids remained happy with how their childhoods had been; although since they'd grown up there had been a few good-natured expressions of wishing Meg had done something differently. One grown child expressed that he'd always hated the kind of sweaters Meg had bought for him when he was kindergarten. Two grown kids confessed to Meg that they hadn't told her one thing or another because they didn't want to make her worry. With that they had teased a little about how much she once worried about one thing or another. Meg and her grown kids openly talked and joked about whatever Meg's missteps may have been, and it certainly hadn't seemed as if she'd done anything so serious she had scarred anyone for life.

Even the Best Teens Are A Worry and A Challenge

Meg's kids were good kids even when they were teens. When they were thirteen and fourteen they were still "young". It was when each was around fifteen that a few issues cropped up. There was that one questionable boyfriend for her daughter and the fact that Meg knew the boy seemed "off", which meant she couldn't go along with some of the things her daughter wanted to be allowed to do. A seventeen-year-old son wanted to play video games and drink beer all night on Friday nights "because he had no school and because he was in the house and not out getting in trouble". Meg heard the reasoning that "all the other kids' parents let them drink in the house", but she didn't feel comfortable being the parent and condoning her child's under-aged drinking. Besides, she didn't want her son drinking so much, so regularly, so soon. She worried that he may become an alcoholic, as most normal parents would under those circumstances. And so, there were arguments, and there was lots of outside "back-up" for her son when it came to "how controlling and unreasonable" Meg was. Her son's friends agreed that she was "old fashioned" and "controlling" and "trying to stop him from growing up". Some of their parents did, in fact, allow them to drink at home.

Meg knew she had sound reasons for expecting her son to wait until he was of legal age (at least), and she knew she couldn't prevent him from becoming an alcoholic if that's what he was going to do. She believed, however, that as long as it was her house (where, besides everything else, she could be held responsible for any serious problems that resulted from her son's drinking) and as long as he remained a minor, it was her job as a parent to put her foot down.

Of course, with teens there were always matters of curfews and use of cars. Sometimes there would matters of questionable friends or questionable parties. Meg was candid with her teens about the fact that she sometimes wasn't even sure about whether she was right or wrong, but that she was trying to use her best judgment as a responsible parent.

Even with the occasional "issue", however, Meg and her kids generally got along throughout their teen years. It was just that Meg knew these were the years when her children started to see her as someone who was keeping them from doing what they wanted to do, at least some of the time.

Maybe the difference between younger children and teens is that it's easy for younger kids to see that a rule about getting to bed "at a decent hour" on a school night makes sense; but it isn't always easy for teens (who so often want to do "ridiculous" or potentially destructive things, and who want them do them really, really, badly) to see the good sense in rules that stop them.

Meg was fortunate that none of her kids wanted to do too many ridiculous things too often, but she knew that their teen years were the years when her children had stopped seeing her as "the perfect Mom" and started to see her someone who "didn't have a clue sometimes".

There had been plenty of times when one or more of her children told Meg they pretty much approved of the kind of mother she was (for one reason or another), but there had also been plenty of times when one of them would shock her by assuming he knew what she was thinking, and why, when he just, plain, didn't. It had been a little disconcerting for Meg to realize that her children didn't always know her as well as she assumed they did, because she realized there were things about them she didn't know. She wondered why they sometimes seemed so certain in their assumptions about her thinking or motives.

Even Younger Kids Disagree and Question Their Mother's Good Sense and Motives

When her kids were younger there had been a few of those times when they didn't understand her motives, but not many. There was, for example, the matter of her son who had school problems. He was a child who had "legitimate" learning difficulties, but he was also a child who wasn't above trying to take advantage of being a kid who was known to have those problems. Being such a well behaved and well liked little boy, teachers and others at school would never imagine that this little boy might actually be taking advantage of the situation. He wasn't an evil or even a manipulative little boy. He was just a little kid with learning problems and a dislike for school work as a result of it.
In other words, he could have done better in school than he was doing (even if he couldn't have done well in English and math).

Besides knowing her son as well as she did, Meg very much believed it was important that children have an adult who believed in them. The teachers at her son's school clearly had little faith in his ability and didn't pretend otherwise. Meg believed the child she so loved deserved to have his parents have faith in him, and there were times when she had to make a choice between something at school that she thought would indicate lack of faith in his potential (which he clearly showed at home, but not school) and something that would show him she had faith him.

This was, however, a case of having all that outside back-up to encourage her son's belief that his mother "didn't understand", because Meg's son was smart enough to know that teachers and learning specialists at the school had expertise his mother didn't have. They were people who believed their expertise and "objectivity" made them know better than Meg. Her son, who didn't want to be expected to do more than he felt like doing, chose to believe the people who had no faith in him and chose to think Meg "only thought that because she was his mother".

Meg was aware of how wrong it can be to expect a child to do what he cannot do in school, but she also fervently believed that a child who has no one to see his potential and encourage him (no one who has faith in him) often suffers tremendously in the long run.

So, when it came to this particular issue, Meg never really quite knew what choices to make; and she knew there was always a good chance her choice would not be the right one for her son. In fact, she knew she (and her son) were, in many ways, in a lose/lose situation.

Meg's young son would point out to her that she "didn't know what it was like". He'd tell remind her that she had had no problems in school. She knew he was right. She didn't know what it was like for him. At the same time, Meg knew what it felt like when nobody seemed to see her potential at one time or another, and she knew she was right in believing that children need someone who believes in them.

In any case, Meg was comfortable with the fact that - teen or ten - kids don't always understand why mothers think or do some things, and she believed one of the best ways to prevent strains in the relationship was to communicate with honest and encourage her kids to do that same.

Oh, The Miracles of Nature - At Least According to Meg

Having experienced being a mother of children who were newborns to grow (so quickly) into adults, Meg discovered two major things about being a mother that had kind of amazed her about herself.

The first was the way mothers can think as if they're different people at the same time. For example, a mother may truly believe one thing is right for her child, but at the same time she can step outside herself and ask if what she, "the mother part of her", thinks may be wrong. This was where those teachers were so often wrong as far as Meg was concerned.

Meg knew she was a mother and was likely to think like a mother. She knew, too, that sometimes it's important not to think like a mother and instead think like the child, himself; a stranger, or some other sensible adult. Meg had seen herself not only grow as a person and as a mother, but in depth and dimensions. This gift that having children had brought her was growth in directions she'd never imagined one individual can grow; and so, as her children grew, Meg knew she'd grown too.

That helped, too, because the Meg who had been so comfortable with ability to care for her newborns and make them feel super secure hadn't been a Meg who had a clue about being a mother to teenagers or adults. "Isn't it great," Meg thought, "how Nature just kind of helps us, mothers, grow in the directions we need?" A side-benefit, Meg thought, would be that when her children were all grown she would come out the other side of mothering as so much more whole a person. What she hadn't learned yet was that there is no "coming out the other side of mothering". There is coming out the other side of rearing children and coming out the other side of needing to take care of them, but there is no coming out the other side of all the other ways in which a mother has bonded with her children.

When her children were still young, Meg had imagined how her role of taking care of her children would change as they grew, of course, and she pictured one day becoming a kind of friend/mother at the same time. She knew she'd always love her children, no matter how old they got; but she had somehow forgotten how she, herself, had never quite changed how she felt about her own mother. She'd forgotten how grown kids, too, can think almost as if they're two separate people - the grown child who is independent and only wants to be "daughter/friend" with her mother, and the same child she's always been in a lot of ways, no matter how grown up and mature she has become.

Since Meg, herself, had imagined how her kids would just kind of naturally turn into adults and "friend/kids" (as opposed to "still-needing-parenting kids"), it never occurred to her that her kids might not realize that, as much as she loved having them as younger kids, there was never a time in their life when had any wish to hold them back or keep them from growing up. After all, when someone loves her children what she wants for them is that they grown and become independent and whole people. That's the whole point behind trying to be a good mother.

That's why, when a person or two hinted that Meg might ("like so many other mothers") want to keep one kid or another from growing up, Meg was shocked. She knew in her heart this wasn't the least bit true. She knew, too, it wasn't even true on a sub-concious level (as some people have been known to suggest about mothers). Meg was confident in the healthy kind of love she had for her kids, and she thought that explaining that would suffice. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. Still, since her children had gotten older Meg was seeing or hearing (from one source or another, not necessarily her own kids) how "mothers don't want their kids to grow up", and "mothers hold their kids back".

As far as Meg was concerned, such accusations (whether directed at her, personally, or at any other mother or mothers in general) were so unfounded for most good mothers, they could not be being levied by any person who was a mother of grown children (or at least not by generally well adjusted ones).

Meg recalled how her own mother had laid out a schedule for when she'd be able to "do the next thing" on her road to growing up. She was eleven when her mother offered her nylons to wear for special occasions. She was twelve when her mother had told her that thirteen was for "wearing just a little light pink lipstick". Fourteen was "being with boys in groups but not on dates". Sixteen was getting a driver's license and being able to date. Meg's mother hadn't, by any stretch of the imagination, been someone to push her daughter toward adulthood. She had explained to Meg, though, that her own mother had forbid her from things like wearing nylons and lipstick, and she didn't want her own daughter to be like she had been.

Like her mother, Meg had seen the role of mother as one of defining when each new step would be appropriate (which may or may not be sooner than a kid preferred), but the main idea of being a mother was to guide a child toward adulthood. Meg had just taken it for granted that "everyone knew" mothers wanted to encourage their children's growth and independence - only at the appropriate time.

A Natural Letting Go

Another thing that had surprised Meg was the way Nature had just kind of let her know when it was time to move herself to a new stage of parenting. For example, when one child was five and the school wanted to go on a field trip to a city quite a distance away, Meg hadn't been comfortable allowing her five-year-old to go. In order to deal with this discomfort she volunteered to be a chaperone. At the time, she had felt as if she were the only one who thought five-year-olds were too young to go that far away and be in a strange city. After all, she had been a zoo once when the teachers were frantically running around, calling the name of a kindergarten child they'd lost track of.

A few years later when the school was to make a trip to that same city, Meg was surprised to discover how comfortable she was with the idea of a somewhat older child going on the same field trip.

There were a lot of things kinds of things on the road to her children going from babies to adulthood. Driving, of course, was a big one. Meg wanted her children to get their licenses but, like so many parents, was absolutely fraught with worry when they'd be out in the car. As time went on she worried less about their age and about their being new drivers but still found herself worrying about other things, especially if they were out late.

The "other part of her" would step outside the "mother part of her" and ask if she were "too much" when she'd be worried about a nineteen-year-old being out late at night, or not letting her know he was OK. She worried that she may be a hopeless worrier who would never acknowledge that her children had grown up.

After a family's worth of kids had gone past nineteen and then twenty and on to (or at least closer to) twenty five, what Meg discovered was that her worry had gradually diminished with each year between eighteen and twenty-five. When her kids were eighteen she was still quite the worrier, thinking how they were still so young and still in their teens. By the time they were twenty she still couldn't just stop the worrying, but she was better. As they became twenty-three she was almost there, but not quite.

What she discovered was that, almost like clockwork, as each child approached twenty-five she had naturally just kind of stopped being a "worrying mother" (except under particularly worrisome circumstances, in which case she thought it was reasonable enough to worry).

What occurred to Meg was how funny it is that Nature has designed kids to not to be fully mature (skeletons-wise, brains-wise) until twenty-five years old, or close to it. It was as if, in spite of laws that say eighteen years old is no longer a minor, the ability of mothers to know there child has fully become an adult (and it's time to back off in the worrying department) goes along with Nature's plan that calls for twenty-five being "the point of full maturity". (Yes, maybe when you're eighteen or nineteen it can feel infuriating to have your mother ask you to call when you get where you're going, but sometimes, maybe, it would be nice to use your new grown-up mentality to understand that your mother is working her way through this new phase of being a mother, and you have to try to understand that, just as she was patient when you were a kind of grouchy fifteen-year-old, you now need to patient with her, as she gets herself through her own phase. She'll get there, just as you did.)

After she discovered this with her first child, Meg knew to explain to the others that she was working on her "letting go ability" but that they needed to understand that it appeared Nature would take care of that if they could be patient with her just a little longer.

What Meg took 25 years and one, whole, first, child to learn was that understanding this latter phase of letting go isn't something people who haven't raised at least one child from birth to twenty-five have discovered for themselves. In fact, in so many ways, just as this is the final chapter of a mother's seeing her child as a full adult; what kids in the eighteen-to-twenty-five age range seem to be in is one final chapter of gradually decreasing immaturity when it comes to their ability to understand that their mother isn't trying to hold them back or run their life. Part of this may be the result of their pre-frontal cortex not being completely mature. There are things, though, that they'll never understand not just until they have their own baby, but until they their baby grows up.

Who's House Is This Anyway?

Meg had friends whose grown or almost grown kids lived at home, and there were often conversations about arguments and power struggles between the parents and kids.

Meg had always had her own idea about this kind of thing. For example, she, of course, always wanted her kids to know that her home was their home. When they had been young she had expected them to pick up after themselves (as long as they were at all old enough), clean their room when it had started to get to be "too much", and help in small ways when it was needed. She saw the home as her own and her husband's responsibility (although with her husband working long hours most of the time, it had become pretty much solely her responsibility). She didn't mind. She figured she'd signed on for that kind of responsibility when she'd married, bought a home, and had a family. She'd always been someone who was efficient and skilled at keeping the house in reasonable order. In fact, she made it look a lot more effortless than it really was.

Still, Meg's reasoning had been that in any house the adults or homeowners should be, when it comes down to it, in charge of who makes any rules about using electricity or who uses what clean towels (that kind of thing). Her reasoning was that someone was paying for things. Someone was doing the cleaning (or else overseeing and helping young children clean their own rooms). When she'd tell the kids she didn't want something left out on the kitchen counter she'd often good-naturedly say, "The person who cleans get to make the rules." She'd explain to them that it's easier to do something like clean a counter when there's not a lot of things left out on it, and her reasonable requests didn't seem to be unreasonable to the kids.

Again, Meg's kids had had a lot of freedom when it came a lot of things. They were being raised in a "military atmosphere" whatsoever. There were just a few things she requested that would make her job easier and make something like counters and table-tops available for anyone who wanted to use them.

Meg's idea was that it was her job to keep the home clean, comfortable, welcoming, and friendly for her own family and any visitors. The atmosphere was relaxed and happy, which is why Meg was surprised when she first started hearing hints that there are mothers "who think the house is more important than people". To Meg, it was precisely because the people who lived in the home were so important to her that she wanted a happy, pleasant, welcoming, environment. The insinuation (or out-and-out comment) that people who aim to keep the home pleasant and generally nice value the house more than people didn't come from Meg's own kids or her husband.

This kind of thing is often the kind of thing mothers discuss, and sometimes disagree on, among themselves. Ideas about this these kinds of issues are often presented in writing or media, or else they're things that are whispered about behind one mother or another's back.

In any case, Meg had friends who had grown kids who thought their mothers were "controlling" when they asked people not to do things like leave dishes in the sink overnight or not to run the gas dryer for too few items. Meg and friends generally agreed that once grown kids have their own place they can do what they want (up to a point), but as long as they're living in the parents' home it's reasonable to make a few requests based on either who pays the bills or who does the cleaning.

One of Meg's friends reminded her daughter that she couldn't "just do what she wanted" even if she got her own apartment, because there are reasonable rules in apartments too.

What Meg and her friends seemed to notice was that kids who may not have expected to do what they wanted when they were little (although they may have preferred that) had seemed to take for granted that once they became eighteen they REALLY should be able to do whatever they wanted to do, regardless of who's house they lived in or how reasonable whatever they wanted to do happened to be (or not be).

On the one hand, mothers often want very much for their kids to know the home is their home. On the other hand, teens and adult children often want to take liberties with the house that parents think amount to turning their home into something more to the standards of college living than family living. Maybe it isn't always easy for a young adult to grasp that fine line between "your home" and "your home to do whatever you want in", or that difference between "your home" and "your house". Sometimes, it precisely because a mother has not made it a point to have her child grow up "feeling less than equal" to her that problems occur when the child feels equal enough to believe he owns a 50/50 share of the house. One problem is that mothers often take it for granted that children will be as thoughtful of them as they have been of their children, when it comes to things like respecting the other's "equal-ness as a human being".

That's not how it always works, because some kids grow up feeling "more equal" than their mother or parents, and that's when they start to believe that their mother "needs to come around" and go along with their preferred way of doings (as well as their presumed right to attempt to "help their mother learn" that her way is "wrong").

So here's another of those lose/lose situations: Most mothers believe it's wrong to raise children with low enough self-esteem/self-respect that they feel like second-class citizens, as compared to their mother/parents. Good mothers make sure their children know that they notice all the good things about each child. Sometimes, though, the combination of the arrogance of youth and the belief that "old people" take things too seriously (or the belief they "worry too much about everything") makes for a grown child who may not really know when to draw the line on himself when it comes to who has what right to do what.

In fairness to all family members, there are also times when one person or another is going through something that makes it difficult for him to hold up his end of any bargain, and that can lead to "unevenness" when it comes to things like financial burden or work load, and that's when the complicated set of dynamics that can exist even under the best circumstances can go from challenging to extremely difficult.

Meg's friends have situations with financially challenged grown children, young parents living at home with children, trouble-teen kids, and any number of situations that make living under one roof that much more of a challenge.

Meg and her friends seemed to notice that if a mother asks a ten-year-old to take his books off the dining room table for dinner, he seems to think that's reasonable enough. If she asks a nineteen-year-old to remove his books from the table he is likely to interpret that as her "being a control freak". ("She has to have everything HER way." ) What grown kids often don't realize is that what's behind "her way" is nothing more unreasonable or selfish than a mother's wanting to set a nice table for EVERYONE'S dinner time.

In so many conversations with friends, Meg (not a grandmother yet) had heard of mothers of grown kids with children (living in their homes) working so hard "not to say anything" because they knew the children were their children's and not theirs, and that it wasn't their place. At the same time, it was common for a grandmother to say her grown son or daughter was doing something that could potentially be harmful to the child, and not saying anything was just "impossible". Here's another lose/lose situation for mothers: Does one not say anything and possibly allow a grandchild to become seriously hurt (or at least be at risk of it), or does she say something, over-step her bounds, and anger her grown child?

Another Issue for Meg

Meg is 54 years old, and her youngest child is 21. Meg looks a lot younger than she is. Some say over 10 years younger. Her youngest child's girlfriend, also 21, has parents who were 20 when she was born. The girlfriend's parents are very different from Meg and her husband, and one big reason may be that either just under or past 30 when their kids were born. Meg and her husband aren't "the party type" anyway, and the fact that they aren't makes them seem a lot more like "fuddy-duddies" than their child's girlfriend's parents (who almost rival their 21-year-old when it comes to partying).

The friend's parents have also always been less "traditional" than Meg and her husband, so, to their child and the friend, the two of them seem a lot older than the younger people find very admirable. What makes it even worse is that Meg doesn't look all that much different from her child's friend's mother; so, in comparison, Meg REALLY seems unnecessarily "old" to her child. The fact is, Meg's got 14 years on the friend's parents, and her husband has 19 years on them. Any generation gap that would exist be any parents and their grown child seems widened by some facts that seem to escape Meg's grown child. Somehow, in all her otherwise mature and reasonable thinking, there's a girl in Meg who kind of wishes her child admired the fact that she looks younger than her years, rather than unfairly compare her to someone who, but for another few years, would be young enough to be Meg's daughter (had Meg had a child when she was, say, 19 or 20). Meg knows, too, that even though she looks younger than she really is, she doesn't really look as young some people seem to think she is. As a result, Meg looks more like someone who doesn't look as good as someone in her early forties should look, and yet she looks young enough that some people seem to forget how old she really is. What is can amount to for someone like Meg (and a lot of women are like Meg these days) is being unfairly judged and compared to people in a completely different age group.

The other thing about Meg's looking younger than she is that if there's one thing worse than a woman who speaks softly most of the time but speaks with strength some of the time, it's a woman who speaks with the confidence and sureness of someone old enough to be not that far away from 60 when she doesn't really come across as all that much older than her grown kids' older cousins.

What Meg has learned in all her years of being a mother is that people are tough on women and tough on mothers. They're often even tougher on middle-aged mothers, especially when those people are grown children (one's own or someone else's). "They" (that younger generation of grown people) often think they've lived as adults long enough now that must surely know everything there is to know about people, parenting, and life. As Meg (and every other mother of grown kids) learned over all the years of being a mother, a person of thirty-five or forty still has so much more to learn before being able to understand the motives, reasons, and thinking of a mother of grown kids. It can be easy to get a ten-year-old to realize that his mother knows what's she talking about. It's even possible sometimes to get an eighteen-year-old to know his mother knows what she's talking about (although eighteen isn't exactly an age when people are listening to too many older people at all). For the middle-aged mother of a thirty-five year-old, it can be close to impossible to get someone who knows she's "that mature" to consider that her mother may know what she's talking about and may not be coming from some unhealthy wish to control everyone else or take over his life.

Why Doesn't Meg Just Speak Up and Tell People How She's Feeling?

As mentioned earlier, Meg is someone who has always been able to communicate really well with her kids. That's how it is for a lot of mothers of younger kids. What happens, though, is that as kids begin to judge their mothers without really understanding where they're coming from, and without giving them the benefit of doubt when it comes to assuming their mothers aren't coming from some kind of unhealthy or needy place, they often stop listening. This is when, if Meg tries using her "nice voice" to explain, someone will just think she's whining. If she uses her no-nonsense/upfront voice to let someone know what's on her mind, she'll be seen as "The B Word". She's tried this kind of honest communication since her kids have grown, but somehow they just don't seem to be listening (or else if they are, they seem to misinterpret so much about what she has said). Even when they seem to have listened, in their lack of equal maturity and life experience to Meg, they often just jump to assumptions about what she ISN'T saying or what she "really means".

Besides, the truth is that there will always be things a mother could not possibly say to her son or daughter either because she knows she must always remain "the strong mother" or perhaps because the truth is something that would hurt her child far more than any normal mother could ever, or would ever, be willing to hurt him.

Messages The World Sends About Mothers of Grown Kids

The world has made it abundantly clear to Meg and other mothers of grown children how many walls must be put up to keep mothers from "taking over" or "crossing boundaries". Mothers are, after all, the people who stop other people from doing what they want to do, and who try to keep people from becoming independent and free of the clutches of their mothers. The irony is that so many people who are strong and independent enough to exert this resistance to "their mother's clinging, oppressive, clutches" don't seem to realize how hard their mother worked in order to make them THAT independent and strong.

Maybe that's true for SOME mothers and their kids, but it isn't true for ALL of them. In fact, there's a good chance it isn't even true for MOST of them. Still, mothers of grown kids have been misunderstood and misinterpreted for so long, Meg just kind of accepted awhile back that she would remain in this odd and maligned stage of life either until enough aging took place to result in others' seeing her as having wisdom, or else maybe just for the rest of her life.

Meg learned a long time ago that even if she sees a grown child as a "companion" these days, rather than as "child", she must not ask the kind of question she might ask any other companion. For example, while Meg might ask her friend where she was going for lunch the next day; she has learned that asking such an innocent question can sometimes get glares, silence, abruptness, or even lies in response (because her innocent question and attempt to make conversation with another adult has been interpreted as "prying").

Yes, the world has effectively taught Meg to be very careful about what she says and does if she doesn't want to be seen as monster, a control freak, or a needy and fragile clinging vine. She doesn't really care what other people think of her, usually. Still, it might be nice if the world didn't seem to have quite so much contempt for, and misunderstand of, people like her.

And so, although she's generally a happy person who is happy with her family, once in awhile Meg goes off in her room by herself, listens to music, and wonders how it is that someone who starts out as simple, trusted, and admired as she has become someone so complicated, so mistrusted, and so despised (usually by strangers who have never met her) for what she is rather than for anything she has ever done to anybody.

She thinks of so many things she has read on the Internet or elsewhere in which grown kids have expressed utter contempt for mothers in general, and she knows that some of those mothers deserve that utter contempt. She wonders, though, how many of those mothers may not actually deserve such contempt. In how many cases, when a grown son or daughter expresses such contempt, might it be a matter of the grown child's simply not having a clue about why his mother thinks or does something and, as a result, filling in the blanks from his own, younger, point-of-view?

And that's what this whole story has been about.