These are the emotions from which I detach. That is what detachment parenting means to me: To detach from the emotions. I see it this way: What I have done did not help my child. There is a slim possibility that if I force my adult child into the world, he (or she) will claim adult status.
It isn't that I don't love them or that I want them out. (Though it does seem to come to that sometimes, those feelings are not how we really feel, at all, or we would feel nothing about what is happening one way or the other.) It just all comes back to whatever I have tried not turning out to help my child. When we get to the point that we know our help is not going to help but we help anyway, that is enabling. Recovering Enabler posted to us that we can tell when we are enabling because we will resent the help we give.
So, we try something new.
If there were any other new thing to try, we would.
We have already tried everything else.
I am sorry. This part is so hard. You were courageous and you loved your son very much to put him out. He must pick up. He is a man. He needs to claim his manhood or turn into a frightened victim.
I think you are doing the right thing for your son.
It is very hard.
Nothing else has worked. It's okay to say those very words to our kids. I did. We were so embroiled in enabling and shaming and guilting and it was a mess. The kids were so entitled. One would fall and we would give way and then, the other.
And we would give way.
And it just kept happening like that.
So we had to stop.
We had to try something else.
Detaching from the horrible emotions that happen when we stop taking care of our kids, however old they are, enabled me to stay with what I believed could help them claim adult status. For us, it is working better than the other way was working. When the kids save themselves, they become their own heroes. We are not their heroes, anymore. On the other hand, they are not beggars, are not people who believe that if only the story is bad enough, we will save them.
They save themselves.
And find self respect there.
We are only in the beginning years of this, but I think it is helping my kids.
It is very hard.
You did so well.
Your son is a man. He needs to take center field in his own life, or he cannot really be a man. When we help too much, the kids begin to lead with weakness ~ with what they cannot do, or with this or that terrible thing someone else did. It's like we teach them to be beggars, the stories of their lives tailor made to get us to play the hero, and save them.
They need to be the heroes in their own stories, just as we are, in our stories.
So many times in life, we are told to follow our intuitions. It is our mother intuition telling us that if our kids are ever going to make it, we need to push them from the nest.
We need to push them from the nest.
Believe they can fly, and push them from the nest. They will flounder.
Then they will fly.
Yes.
If we commit to taking special care of ourselves ~ something simple and easily accomplished, like drinking a glass of water first thing every morning ~ that will help us survive these changes. If we believe in the kids and tell them we do, that will help us both.
The kids are scared, too.
Like the fledglings are when they leave the nest.
But here is the thing. If the mother did not push her fledgling to fly, the fledgling's body would grow so heavy, but the muscles in his wings would not have developed. Soon, he will be a flightless bird through no one's fault, really.
But he will be a worthless thing to himself, nonetheless. Birds are meant to fly. How can they respect themselves when the other fledglings fly with strength and grace and beauty and their wings are tiny, useless things?
That is why they come almost to hate us, in their anger and their shame at their tiny, useless wings.
It helps me to see it this way.
It is very hard.
For my children, for today, it is better. Their wings are still underdeveloped, but they believe, now, that they can fly, and they are flying.
This has been very good for them, and for me. It breaks something in me, to do it.
I believe it is the best thing I could do, for them. So, that is what I do.
Cedar
