The one about parenting your kidults

Today has been a different day. It’s Thursday evening when I’m writing this after a day of all the emotions.

My son Freddy got his BTech results and got into Leeds Beckett Uni. The morning started with all the high stress mainly because I hadn’t had coffee, had to wake Freddy up at 8am and then we had to log on to the system to get the results. And guess what the system didn’t work. We couldn’t get on. It was a tense ten minutes and I still hadn’t had coffee. Then the results were in, he had his place confirmed, I was awash with emotion and Freddy went back to sleep (obvs).

And all day I’ve just been full t’brim with emotion with some serious eye leaking going on. (Pretending it was hayfever obvs).

It’s a funny thing being a parent (biggest understatement ever). You think when they’re small that the next stage will be easier and then you worry about them growing up. You don’t notice the last time their hand automatically found yours, the last time you picked them up, you don’t remember when you stopped being mummy and started being mum (or My G, in the case of Freddy, or Sarah if I don’t answer to Mum after the third time.)

You move through all the stages from being in control of their every movement, to knowing all the friends, to knowing exactly where they are, to letting go, to letting them make decisions knowing your role is to be there to support, to catch and to hold but always to let go.

When my smalls were small, before they were tall, when I was the tallest in our tribe, when Freddy’s hand still found mine, when his hand was smaller than mine, I worried I would lose him one day.

Lose him to life, to adventure, to making his own way because that’s my job: to keep him safe, shower him in love and let them find their own way.

And then today when I looked at my boy, I was so blinking proud. He’s morphed from a small into a not so small and was worried about being taller and then was the tallest and he still brings me all the joy, all the daft conversations, tells me he loves me daily and even takes me out on mum dates.

He’s heart wrenchingly beautiful inside and out and is more than capable of making very stupid decisions (see tattoo from lads holiday in Zante as evidence number 2534234). He’s incapable of bringing his plates down from his room and makes a LOT of snacks at stupid o’clock and I also know when I drop him off at uni in September, I will be a big fat mess.

When I dropped the daughter off at uni in 2020, I sobbed and sobbed (after I’d got in the car obvs) and I know the same emotion is coming my way. That pride at watching him grow and the emotion at watching him go.

Being a parent never stops (as my 80 year old mum tells me), the worries (in my humble opinion) get bigger and our jobs get harder as we encourage them to find their own way and we watch from the sidelines.

Now the ticking time bomb of September is niggling my noggin, building the excitement for Freddy, helping him feel secure through his nerves at moving away from home, excited for him for his next adventure to begin and all of the life he has to look forward to and grateful I have such a fab relationship with my kids and that I have my kids.

And inside I’m also whispering “don’t forget to come home.’