Off the leash

When MJ was a toddler, Frank and I would take her walking in the mall. She would gleefully run ahead of us two or three store-widths, seem to reach the end of an invisible leash, come scampering back, and then do it again. And again. And again.

It was one of her favorite games.

What she was playing with was separation. She was getting her first small taste of life without parents, and we were getting our first small taste of the joy and discomfort that come with watching a child move into independence. We were also discovering a pattern of separation-and-return that has been repeated time and again over the course of our kids' lives.

That first invisible leash was MJ's own. She set the length, and it was well within my comfort zone. She had more stranger fear than I did, so I enjoyed (if I had but known it) a lovely little stretch of time where she never challenged my own standard of safety. Bliss!

And then she got older.

Yeah. That happens. Suddenly, she was tugging on my invisible leash, wanting to go farther in the mall, wanting to go around the block without me, wanting to walk to Safeway—three whole blocks!—alone, wanting to stay home alone, and on and on. And then I blinked, and she was 13, and her leash-tugging was about parties at boys' houses, and sleepover parties in hotels in downtown Seattle, and unaccompanied bus and train and plane trips to gatherings in other states.

Simultaneously with these more physical moves toward independence, she began asserting her dominion over her own mind. She wanted to think and dream and worry without talking to me about it. She wanted to hear my opinions only when she asked for them, thank you very much, and she didn't care to be burdened with all my endless worries, especially that dorky one about the disintegration of the parent-teen relationship.

The more I clung, the more I tried to shorten that invisible leash, the worse our relationship got. I panicked. I got emotional. We fought. She complained about me to other people. I was in despair, all my worst nightmares about teenagers coming true.

Interestingly, it was some advice I got about demanding respect and setting limits that snapped me out of it. That is what everybody says. That is what everybody does. Does it work? HELL NO.

Instead, I backed off. I said yes even when my discomfort made me want to say no. I started waiting for her to come to me. I started being really aware and somewhat cautious of when I touched or hugged her. I let her do the initiating (or not). When she talked, I tried to listen and enjoy without offering opinions. That last might have been key, actually. She wanted to try things her way for a while, without my two cents' worth. It was a reasonable thing to want!

As soon as I removed my energy (not my love) from the equation, it got a lot less dramatic. Things settled down almost immediately and improved by leaps over the next couple months. Slowly, she began talking to me again. She gave me credit for trying.

Eventually, she even talked to me about that time, about the pressure she had been putting on herself to grow up fast-faster-fastest, and how much she had been figuring out about herself and the world and interpersonal relationships. Turns out it was HUGE period of growth in her life. Oh, how I regret that I wasn't a calm shelter during that time instead of something else she had to wrestle with!

But she made it through even so. She is very strong, resourceful and smart. And nowadays, whether I like it or not, she's off the leash. The separation-and-return cycle has given way to a level of independence that lacks only material practicalities to make it complete. I am still here for her. I still provide whatever support I can (and always will), and when she chooses something that makes me uncomfortable, she sometimes still hears about it (and probably always will). There's no doubt which of those she appreciates more. ;-)

And we're friends-but-not-friends. I don't know that I will ever be one of her friends, one of those people you rely on for playtime and somebody to hang with and somebody to lend an ear when you need to complain about your mother. But I'm her mother with whom she is friendly, and that's a lovely thing indeed.

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For more of my writings about teens and unschooling, see my web site.