“I'M DREADING HAVING MY BIG KID HOME THIS SUMMER”—THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK | EP. 258
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Have you ever had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from, because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. Summer is just around the corner, and I want to ask you something, and I want you to be really honest with yourself as you answer it.
Are you dreading having your big kid home more this summer? Maybe your college student is coming back for a few months. Maybe your teen who's been in school in their routine largely out of your hair is suddenly going to be home all the time in your space with their stuff and their moods and their late nights and their late mornings and their everything. And instead of feeling the excitement that maybe you think you should be feeling, there's this low-level dread sitting in your chest.
Maybe it's been building already for weeks. Maybe you haven't even said it out loud, but the thought is there. I'm dreading having my big kid home this summer.
And look, we have these types of thoughts in our heads, and then almost immediately, we have this follow-up thought, the one that makes you want to shove the first one down as soon as possible, because you think, what kind of mother thinks this? And my friend, let me tell you something. This thought is one of the most common things I hear from moms in my coaching practice right around this time of year. And every time someone says it to me, they say it like they're confessing something terrible, and then they wait for me to judge them.
But my friend, I don't, because I understand it so completely. So we have this thought, I'm dreading having my big kid home this summer. Now, what does this dread actually feel like? Dread is like this heavy, tight feeling.
It lives somewhere in your chest or in your stomach, and it's a little bit like low-level anxiety, maybe also a little bit like resignation. Moms have said to me, I just feel hopeless. It's the sense that something hard is coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
And notice what it makes you want to do. Dread makes you want to brace, to prepare, maybe also to protect yourself from what's coming. You might start thinking about all of the things that you're going to have to manage, all the conflict you're going to have to navigate, and maybe also all the ways your routine and your life and your peace is about to be disrupted.
And here's what I want to invite you to see. When you're operating from dread, you've essentially already decided how this summer is going to go, before it even starts, before your kid even walks through the door to start their summer. So just think about that for a second, how we've already decided it's going to be terrible.
And I'm going to come back to that, but first, let's talk about the shame that this thought brings up in us. Because in some ways, this shame is even worse than the dread. Because here's what we tend to believe about what a good mother is supposed to feel when her kid comes home.
She's supposed to be happy, thrilled, and grateful. She's supposed to be counting down the days till her kid gets home. And you know, you've seen the posts of other people so excited to have their college kid home, so excited to start the summer with her family.
You imagine that mom is making a list of all of the fun things the family's going to do together, the beach trips and the late night movies. You imagine her heart is full with excitement and anticipation, and you don't feel that. Instead, you feel dread.
And so your brain concludes that something must be wrong with me. And then the shame spiral begins. I must not love my kid enough, or other moms don't feel this way.
And maybe also, what's wrong with my kid? Or what did I do wrong that this is so hard? And my friend, here's what that shame does to you. The truth is, it doesn't help you. It doesn't make the dread go away.
It just piles on top of it and makes everything feel heavier and darker and more hopeless. You feel dread about the summer. Then you feel shame about the dread.
Then you feel awful about feeling shame while also feeling the dread. It becomes this whole internal mess. And again, the summer hasn't even started yet.
So my friend, what I really want you to hear is that your dread is not a sign that there's something wrong with you. It's also not a reflection of how much or how little you love your kid. In fact, this dread might actually be evidence of how much you care.
Because you wouldn't be dreading this if you didn't really care about this relationship. So let's take a look at what's actually going on in our minds when we think I'm dreading having my big kid home. Because dread is always pointing at something specific.
There's always something, or maybe a whole list of somethings, that your brain is predicting is going to happen this summer. And those predictions are what's creating the dread. So what is it for you? Maybe you're dreading the the way conversations that start normally sometimes always end in tension or hurt feelings, or someone walking away pissed off.
Maybe you've had times before with this big kid where you feel like you're walking on eggshells in your own home. Or maybe you dread the worry, that low-level anxiety that hums in the background when your kid is home. Are they okay? Are they making good choices? What are they doing closed up in their room all day? Where are they? Is this normal? You're already thinking about the mental load and the anxiety you feel like you're going to be carrying all summer.
You could also be dreading the mess, or the noise, or the disruption to the quiet and the rhythm of your life that you've gotten used to during the school year. You could also be anticipating that you're going to spend the whole summer trying to connect with your big kid, and also being rejected. You can see yourself trying to have a conversation with them and those one-word answers.
We're trying to do something together, just inviting them to do something simple and feeling like your kid would rather be literally anywhere else. Maybe you can already see the version of yourself you're going to become that you don't like, the version of you who nags and lectures even though you tell yourself you don't want to do that. You can also see the resentment that will build when you feel unseen and unappreciated in your own home for everything that you do for your big kid.
Can you already see this? The truth is, dread isn't really about the future. It's really about what you're predicting about the future based on what's happened before, and your fear is that history is going to repeat itself. What's interesting is that there is a very specific mindset trap at the heart of the thought, I'm dreading having my big kid home this summer.
And this trap is actually a version of catastrophizing, but I'm going to give it a label and I'm going to call it the predictive trap. You could also think of it as fortune-telling. So here's what the predictive trap looks like.
Your brain takes everything that's been difficult with your kid, every hard conversation, every moment of disconnection, every time you've felt hurt or rejected or frustrated, and your mind puts all of those moments together into a story about what's going to happen. It essentially runs this simulation of summer in your mind before the summer even begins. And because your brain is wired to keep you safe, it almost never runs the best-case version of the simulation.
In fact, it simply runs the worst-case scenario, the version where the conflict happens again, where you feel disconnected again, or where you end up feeling frustrated and resentful and wondering what went wrong again. And the thing is, your mind presents this simulation, this prediction about the future, it presents it to you as if it's a fact, as if it's already decided, as if the summer's already over and it went exactly as badly as you feared it would. And what happens when you believe this prediction? Well, you brace.
You go into the summer already in a defensive posture, already a little guarded, already a little tense. You're essentially waiting for the thing that you're dreading to happen. And my friend, here's the painful truth about going into the summer this way.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prediction. When you're braced and guarded and tense, your kid feels it. They may not be able to articulate it, but they feel it.
And they respond to that energy, to the energy of someone who's waiting for them to be a problem. And suddenly, the very dynamic you were dreading is coming true. And that's not because it was inevitable, but because your prediction changed how you showed up.
And how you showed up changed how they responded. And now you have what feels like confirmation that you were right to dread it. And this is the trap.
And it's so subtle because it feels like you're just being realistic, like you're just preparing yourself for what's to come. But my friend, preparing for the worst is not the same as being realistic. It's just deciding ahead of time how the story is going to unfold.
And here's what this costs you. The truth is it costs you the summer before it even starts. It costs you the moments of genuine connection that might have happened.
Those unexpected conversations at the kitchen counter. Those nights when your kid actually wanted to watch a movie with you. It also costs you that morning when they seemed lighter and you got a glimpse of the relationship you're hoping for.
These moments almost become invisible when you're looking for the hard ones. This dynamic also costs your kid something. Because when they walk through that door and they can sense, even unconsciously, that you're already dreading having them there, it creates distance.
And it makes connection harder, not easier. Because you're essentially planting a seed of the very disconnection you're trying to protect yourself from. And all of this costs you your peace of mind.
Because dread is exhausting. Living in a predicted future that hasn't happened yet, spending all of May and June inside your worst case scenario, it takes an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy that you could be spending somewhere else. The thought I'm dreading having my big kid home feels honest.
Feels like you're telling the truth. Maybe you also can feel like you're managing your expectations, protecting yourself from disappointment. But what it's actually doing is stealing something from you before anyone or anything else has had a chance to.
So what's the alternative? Because I'm not going to tell you to just think positive. I'm also not going to tell you to pretend the hard stuff hasn't happened or that it's not going to happen again. Because the truth is your kid is going to act the way that they're going to act.
You showing up as the best version of yourself doesn't necessarily guarantee that it's going to be moonlight and roses all summer. But I want to offer you something to sit with. What if this summer isn't already written? What if the story of the summer is genuinely actually still unfolding? And what if there is real possibility in it? Maybe it's possible that things could go differently than they have before.
And what if the thing that has the most influence over how the summer goes is not your kid? What if it's you? And I don't say this in a it's all your fault kind of way, but in the most empowering way possible. Because what if the version of you that shows up this summer has more to do with how the summer goes than anything your kid could possibly do? Because when you release the predicted future, when you're not braced and guarded and tense, you show up differently. You become more available and more open, more able to catch a moment of connection when it's right in front of you, instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This is the possibility that lives on the other side of that thought. I'm dreading having my big kid home. That doesn't mean it's going to be a summer.
But what if you didn't write the ending of the summer before it begins? My friend, understanding how to take your power back in your relationship with your big kid is the work we do together in my coaching programs, Mom 2.0. Because this tendency we have to write the story before it happens, it's just one of the ways our minds try to protect us from the very connections we most want. And when you learn how to recognize that, to understand what it's creating for you and for your relationship with your big kid, these thoughts loosen their grip. In my coaching programs, I work with moms to uncover exactly these types of patterns, those hidden thoughts that are running on autopilot, creating emotions that you don't want and driving reactions you regret.
In my programs, I teach you a real skill set, actual tools to help you start to operate from a different place, to help you lead from intention rather than reacting to what your big kid does. My friend, you deserve a summer that isn't decided before it starts. In fact, you deserve the possibility of what could actually happen when you show up without the weight of what you've already decided is going to happen.
So let me come back to that thought. I'm dreading having my big kid home this summer. If you've been grappling with this thought, I want you to hear this.
You are not a bad mom. You are likely a mom who has had hard seasons with your kid, and your brain is just trying to protect you from having another one. And that makes complete sense.
But the protection your mind is offering you comes at a cost. It costs you the summer before it begins, and it costs your kid the version of you that's open to something different. My friend, peace is actually available to you, not just when everything goes perfectly, but because you decide to stop living inside a story that hasn't happened yet.
What if instead of bracing for the summer you're predicting, you got just a little curious about the summer that might actually be possible? That question is the beginning of everything changing, my friend. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
