THIS IS IT - THE LAST 100
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Before we get started, I want to tell you about my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0. Consider this, Mom 2.0 is able to step off the rollercoaster of painful emotions that comes with raising teens.
She understands the root cause of her anxiety, frustration, guilt, and sadness and is able to decide how she wants to show up as the mom she wants to be for her big kids as they navigate big challenges. She's learned a skill set that she can apply to any relationship, challenge, or opportunity in her life. She prioritizes her family without sacrificing herself.
Can you imagine this being you? I know it's possible and I know how to help you achieve it because I've been there and I've done it. Are you ready to get started? Join me in Mom 2.0. Now onto the show. Episode number 39.
Well, my friends, this is it. We always knew our babies would leave the nest, and now it seems we can put a number on the finite number of months or even days left before a graduation or the number of days that our kids come home to be with us. This is the culmination of this beautiful journey we've been on with our babies.
So whether your child is a senior graduating in just a few short days or months, or they still have a year or two to go, or maybe your baby has already left the nest and you have a heartbreakingly few number of days that you get to bask in their presence when they get home. Now both the days and the years are short. This is it.
Those three words alone, this is it, can create a wide variety of emotions. For kids, by the time they become seniors, this is it might feel like relief. They've been on a marathon and the end is in sight.
Although if you've ever done a marathon, and I did one, it was on my bucket list. I checked the box and now I'm good. No more marathons.
But my memory of the marathon was that the last 0.2 miles were the best and the worst. You're looking ahead and you know the race is almost over, an end to the pain of it, but also an end to the purpose and the connection we might have felt in the race itself, the preparation and the training, the friends we made along the way. By now, some lucky seniors have already gotten into college and have made their decision where they're going.
And others are still waiting another few weeks after already waiting months. That last 0.2 miles can feel excruciatingly long. And it's actually interesting that once your child gets into college, it almost feels like the race is supposed to be over, but it's not.
There's still work to be completed, maybe AP exams to take, the final commitments to athletics and art programs to undertake. This is it. Our seniors might still think these 100 days feel long.
But for us, this is it takes on a whole new meaning. Our memory of the marathon started well before our child was even born. The stories about how and when they were conceived, the tale as old as time about the day you raced to the hospital to give birth to your baby on your shared birthday, although they don't necessarily think of it that way.
I'm sure you probably every once in a while stop and think about how crazy it is that you carry this human in your body for nine months, and now they're five or six feet tall. This independent human being about to take on the world entirely without you. This is it.
I don't know about you, but I have such vivid memories of my boys when they were little. So many precious moments stick out in my mind, but it all feels so far away, a lifetime really. I often feel like I do a double take when my boys walk in the room.
I still see their little bodies and hear their little voices, all while looking up at them now and hearing their deep adult conversations. We entered into this pact of parenting knowing that at some point we'd have to send them out in the world. Of course.
In fact, we've been working our tails off doing everything in our power to help them successfully launch themselves, either by helping support their dreams to go to college or whatever else they want to pursue in life. But now that the time of send-off seems imminent, it almost feels like we're running out of time, that we have so much to fit in, so many memories to make so that they remember, so that they always look forward to coming home. My son made the comment a few months ago that he would always come to visit.
He used the word visit. I couldn't help myself. I responded, you mean you'll always come home? But the reality is that they'll be creating a new home, a new life that will become increasingly separate from ours, even though it's quite likely that they will frequently come home to visit on a fairly regular basis.
The focus of our kids' lives for the past year, at least, has been preparing for this new dream, their new adventure, their new home. It's been an incredible ride and there have been ups and downs for sure. The awful stress of the college process, the challenge of completing the most difficult coursework of our kids' careers to date, social pressure.
Our kids have been riding this roller coaster, but the whole time, for many of our kids, they've had an eye on their future, the what comes next. They may not be entirely sure of what that next looks like yet, but they know for certain that the high school chapter is ending and then the next chapter is waiting for them to write. You know, it reminds me of that Natasha Bedingfield song, Unwritten.
Can you believe that was 19 years ago? Ironically, right around the time we were on the brink of conceiving our kids. Live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins.
The rest is still unwritten. Think about yourself 19 years ago. Maybe you were already a mom or maybe you were embarking on having your very first child.
Would that younger version of yourself ever have imagined where your life with your child or children would take you? Could you even have dreamed of it? Sure, maybe you knew you wanted to be a mother, but the rest, the unique personality of each of your children, the special traits that you noticed when they were babies that even now you can see in them, their fearlessness, their desire for close affection, their thoughtfulness, the crazy close calls that you remember like they were yesterday, the times when the worst didn't happen, thank God. And those times when they weren't so lucky, the way they work through those setbacks and challenges. Could you have dreamed any of it ahead of time? For me, the answer is definitely not.
And I remember not needing to know how it would all turn out back then. Maybe it's because I was so in the weeds of being a first time mom that the thought of what would happen in three years, no less 18 or 19 years, those thoughts didn't cross my mind. Sometimes I was just hoping I would make it to bedtime.
But for the past few years, as our kids have approached adulthood, we've had quite a bit more time and space to dream about our future. But for some of us, it's hard to do. We're not in the habit of putting ourselves first or thinking about what we want.
In fact, we're probably in the habit of putting ourselves very close to last quite a bit of the time. I've talked on this podcast quite a bit about habits, particularly in relation to typical habits we want to break. But we also have plenty of habits that are essential to us because they help us be more efficient in the way we live our lives.
According to some studies, 40% of what we do each day is habitual. The habit cycle typically involves some kind of reward in the form of pleasure and also potentially a big dopamine hit. The desire for the reward actually motivates us to take action.
And the more we take action, the more we are rewarded. Over time, these actions become routine, and we don't even have to think about them anymore. If we think about our action of putting our kids first as a habit, it's kind of interesting to think about this in the context of the habit cycle framework.
So the habit reward loop involves a trigger. Then there's an action that you take in response to the trigger. And then the most important part, the reward.
It's easy to think of this in the context of, say, your favorite food. Let's say the trigger is just being offered your favorite food. The trigger makes you feel desire.
And so you take action by eating the food to satisfy the desire. Then of course, you get a big hit of pleasure from eating the food, which only reinforces your future desire for that food. Think about this loop when you try to break the habit.
Say you're on a diet or have given up the food for a period of time. It's usually impossible to eliminate the trigger entirely. And so your desire will come up eventually.
When you eat the food, you satisfy your desire. But when you don't eat the food, it's uncomfortable. You're left with this unsatisfied craving.
Okay, with that as background, let's look at this in the context of our kids, putting them first. The trigger, well, back when they were babies, the trigger was their crying. And our babies were pretty good at letting us know when they needed something back then.
So the cry, the trigger, inspired in us a big desire to get them to stop crying. We were motivated to try to figure out what was wrong. And when we finally broke the code, maybe fed them or changed them or got them to fall asleep, finally, we experienced a big reward, relief, maybe joy.
Whether we realized it or not, probably a big dopamine hit from the pleasure of them not crying. Think about how many times you practiced this habit loop in even the first 100 days of your child's life. Probably at least five times a day, often more.
Thousands of times in the first year. Thousands in the first year. And then the rewards kept getting bigger, right? First there was a smile, then a giggle, then a first word, a messy kiss on the cheek.
As our kids have grown up, we've had an infinite number of rewards throughout every day, every week of their life. That's only reinforced our desire to meet their needs. It's actually a deeply ingrained habit at this point.
And if it's been your habit, like it's been for so many of us moms, to put your kids' needs above your own, well, the rewards you've received in responding to their needs have reinforced that habit as well, which means that habit is hard to break. And we don't really want to break it, right? I'm sure there isn't one among us who would say that we want to put our kids last, even now when they don't seem to need or really want our help anymore. But as we approach these last 100 days or 100 weeks or 100 hours that we see them when they're home from college, the concept of putting our kids first really does start to change.
I want to ask you if you've experienced a change in the amount of time your child spends with you. Maybe they are behind closed doors quite a bit more, or they're out with their friends, or maybe they confide in you a little less. Their pulling away is a natural part of their process of growing up and discovering who they are apart from us.
But have you noticed that as they pull away, we can often find ourselves waiting in the wings just in case. Maybe it starts by staying home on the weekends in case they need a ride home or not making plans to go out because you don't want to leave them home alone if they don't have plans. If they do stay home, they don't necessarily hang out with you.
They often just stay up in their room behind closed doors, but we're there just in case. As another example, maybe we're also in the habit of helping our kids manage their homework and their schedule. We have to help, of course, when they're little.
But once they get to high school, it's possible that they're capable of doing all of this on their own. But it can be hard to break the habit of checking on their assignments, reminding them, keeping their calendar, nagging them. How often have you told yourself that your big kid needs you to do something for them, keep them on top of their school deadlines, or wake them up in the morning, clean up their room, or help them with their college essays? And let me be clear, I'm not passing any judgment about whether you should or shouldn't be doing any of these things.
But I just think it's interesting to ask ourselves, honestly, how much are we doing it because our kids truly need us to do those things? And how much of it is us seeking a bit of that reward we get from completing the habit loop of responding to our kids' needs? A number of my clients have expressed that they feel torn about how much help and support they should be giving their teens. On the one hand, we can fear that we've done too much and that when our child goes off to college, they'll be unprepared to keep up with their responsibilities entirely on their own. We're afraid they'll fail once the safety net of our support isn't with them on a day-to-day basis.
And no doubt some of our kids might have a rude awakening when they get to college, at least in some respect, even if it's just having to do their laundry or manage their time without the rigidity of a high school class schedule. But on the other hand, it's precisely this fear that keeps us fulfilling that habit loop time and again while our kids are home. Trigger our kids' cry for help.
At this point, it's no longer a cry, but it's our perception of our kids' need. And so often, because they're not even telling us what they need anymore, we're left to fill in the blanks. And the thing motivating us to take action and fill that need, real or perceived, the motivation for us is that reward, that feeling of satisfaction, relief, and joy when we've successfully supported our child in a way that allows us to believe, for that moment anyway, that everything is okay.
We've been chasing that reward for 15 or 20 or more years, my friend, that everything is okay with my baby feeling, whatever it is for you in any given moment. Relief, satisfaction, joy, gratitude, peace. These are pretty powerful feelings when it comes to parenting, because think of their opposites, the feelings we feel when we think there's something wrong with our child.
Anxiety, fear, unhappiness, panic. We're craving the positive feelings, but we also for sure want to avoid those terrible feelings at all costs. So again, this habit loop is well ingrained in us to put our kids first, to be there anytime they need us.
And so now that our kids are adults or approaching adulthood and independence, how much do they really need us? I want to invite you to explore the question honestly. Does your child need you to do their laundry anymore? Probably not, but then I'll admit even I find myself doing the laundry because I can't stand the piles of dirty clothes on their floor. I could absolutely make my boys do their own laundry.
I'm sure they would eventually do their laundry if I really just left it to them, but I've come to the realization that I do their laundry for me because I prefer their rooms to not have piles of clothing all over the place. I get a reward, a feeling of my own satisfaction, knowing that the laundry is clean and put away at least for a few hours. Does your big kid need you to help them manage their test schedule and homework deadlines? Depending on your child, the answer may be absolutely not, or it might be absolutely yes.
Again, this isn't about there being a right answer. It's about exploring whose need you're filling. Let's say your child happens to be a fairly high achiever who you believe is by and large very capable of keeping up with their schoolwork on their own.
If this is you, let me ask you, do you check their grades every so often just to be sure? I'm going to guess that eight or nine out of 10 of you would probably say yes. I check. It's that thing we do as parents.
Call it almost like a sonar signal that we send out regularly to our kids, checking to be sure everything's okay. It's like confirming the affirmative. Yep, all is well.
When we see evidence that everything is okay, it's like that gives us permission to not need to take action to help. But even in that action of checking, we're responding to the trigger, checking to see if they need us. Think about this.
The actual trigger is a thought that we have about there being something wrong, something we need to fix, some way we need to help. For example, I need to remind her to complete that assignment. I need to monitor his driving to make sure he's not speeding.
I don't like how much he's gaming. I'm going to make him go out and get some exercise. We have these thoughts because we have a belief, whether we realize it or not, that there's a particular way that things should be done.
School assignments should be completed on time. Kids shouldn't speed in cars, and people should balance gaming and getting exercise. So we as parents would love it if our kids would just see it our way, and inevitably they don't.
I probably don't even need to mention how much frustration and anger these moments cause us with our kids. But consider this. We have this thought that something our kids are doing isn't quite right, or we're afraid they'll miss something if we don't remind them.
We have this thought, and it creates a feeling of urgency in us that prompts us to remind, nag, or yell at them. And typically these conversations don't go as well as we'd hoped. Rarely do our kids say, sure mom, you're right, I'd love to stop gaming and go out for a bike ride.
We actually had a joke in our house during COVID about activity time, because I'd been on my own mission at the time to get one of my sons to curtail his gaming. On one afternoon, I went into his room and reminded him that he'd agreed to stop gaming at some particular time. And I heard one of his friends on Discord say, I hate activity time.
I guess his mom had the same idea as me. So look, we think we know best. And honestly, I think we often do.
We've learned from our own mistakes or by witnessing the mistakes of others. And the last thing we want is for our own kids to be subjected to unnecessary failure or disappointment if we could have prevented it. But also the perception that our kid needs us fills a need for us too.
Because if we can just get them to listen and do the right thing in our minds, then they'll be okay and we will feel better. We want to avoid feeling terrible if they do end up failing in some way. We want to avoid that at all costs.
And so the possibility that our child needs our help causes us to want to react, to respond to that trigger, to get the reward of the relief of avoiding disaster, of keeping them safe. It's honestly like a drug, that relief, that feeling of peace, that thought that everything is okay. But our need to feel better comes at a cost because our ability to change our children so we can feel better is rapidly fading.
They're their own individual human beings. And the older they get, the more they're going to do exactly what they want to do. Even if your child is one of those few who tends to agree with you most of the time, to take your advice most of the time, inevitably, as they go off to school, they're not going to be around as much to fulfill the need you have to feel needed.
It's a habit. And we all know that habits are very hard to break. Now, this isn't a bad habit.
It's actually been a very necessary habit to put our kids first, to do whatever we could to help them. Look out for danger, to be here just in case. In big and small ways, we've prioritized our kids' needs so much that we haven't even recognized how much they are fulfilling a need for us.
And here's an thought to consider. As long as we live, we're going to be looking out for our children. We'll always want them to be happy and to succeed.
And I can imagine speaking for myself that there will never be a time when I wouldn't drop everything to help my boys if they needed me. But how long are you going to wait before you stop relying on your child for that reward? It's been a beautiful thing. The hugs, the smiles, the love, all of these precious moments we've shared as they've grown up.
But that love, that reward that you've been feeling has been inside of you all of the time. And it's available to you whenever you want to access it. For a long time, your dream has been your child's dream, their happiness, their success.
Your life has been intrinsically enmeshed with theirs. But all along, you have created the reward for yourself. Your child didn't make you feel the love.
You created that. You created that sense of purpose and fulfillment you've had all along as a mother. So that purpose doesn't have to end when they leave the nest or start to pull away.
But it may need to change as you give your child room to grow without you there to save them. Ask yourself when you're helping them, do they need me? Or is this me needing them? Our kids are going out in the world to create a new purpose in life for themselves. It's a blank canvas and they have no idea how it all turned out.
They're probably excited and terrified. You may be excited and terrified for them and maybe also for yourself. But there's also a blank page in front of you.
You've been the author of so many stories in your life already and you get the privilege of writing a few more. The story will include your joy watching your child live out their dreams, but hopefully it will also include some of your own dreams. Stop waiting for your child to need you so that you can feel that reward of being needed, of fulfilling that purpose.
You don't need them to create that for you. Live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins.
The rest is still unwritten for our babies and for us.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
