PARENTING TEENS IN THE AGE OF FIND MY IPHONE—WHY MORE INFORMATION DOESN'T BRING MORE PEACE | EP. 267
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 found yourself lying awake at three o'clock in the morning, desperately wishing you could know that your child was okay? If you're a mom of a young adult kid, you know that feeling. The urge to check the location app one more time, or to wait for that text, or to make sure they made it home safely. But what if that constant need to know isn't actually creating peace? In today's episode, I'm sharing a very personal 3 a.m. story that revealed something I think so many of us moms do without even realizing it, and why no amount of information will ever give us the peace we're actually looking for.
You'll discover why we so often confuse knowing with feeling safe, and how to build the kind of self-trust that lets you live and sleep with more peace. Let's dive in. Hello, my friend.
I had such a crazy experience the other night at three in the morning that I have to tell you about. My son was spending his last day at home before he had to leave for the summer to go to work at an internship in the city. And so in my mind, I was thinking I wanted to be around in case he needed anything, or in case he was going to be home and I could make dinner.
And to be honest, I had other plans that I didn't really want to cancel if my son was just going to be busy, which he usually is. But on the other hand, I didn't want to miss out on the chance to support him if he was going to be home. So I often do this thing, which you might find familiar.
You try to check in with your kid to find out their plan, and they give you a very non-committal response. Like, I might be home, I might not be home. And it can be really annoying when you want an actual answer and you don't get one.
But over the years, I've learned that pushing for an answer isn't actually going to get me any closer to knowing what's going on. And in fact, it also just gives me more pushback. So I don't push.
But what I realize I do instead is that I track my boys on Find My iPhone. And I'm not ashamed to admit it, because I'm willing to bet you've done this too. So my boys know I do it.
And while tracking them doesn't give me any information about their future plans, sometimes, depending on what they're doing, I'll get a sense of whether or not they're going to be home. For example, if my son's at the gym, I know he's probably going to come home to take a shower. Whereas if he's visiting a friend who lives 45 minutes away, I'm guessing he's probably going to be gone for the night.
Anyway, so what happened was, I went on Find My iPhone that afternoon because I didn't want to reach out and get the same, I don't know what I'm doing response. I just thought, let me look and see what he's doing. And what I found was that I couldn't find my son's iPhone.
The last location update was three hours prior. And in fact, there was even a notification under the phone that said, this phone will be deleted in a month, which was odd. So my first thought was, this kid has removed me from being able to see his location.
He stopped sharing it. And at first, I'm a little put off. And then I recognize, okay, well, the kid's 19 years old.
It's his prerogative to not share his location. I definitely thought I'm going to ask him about it because the other place my head goes is, did I do something to warrant this sudden unfollow? I mean, he knows I follow him. It's not like this is a secret.
And I try not to abuse the privilege. Although he's admitted to me that he also likes knowing where I am too. I think in his mind, he knows I can't sneak up on him if he knows where I am, or maybe in a better light, if he needs to find me, he knows where I'll be.
So I'm sitting with this confusion until I get home. I walk in and my husband's on the phone. So I show him my phone with the dark icon where my son's phone should be.
And then he points to a broken phone on the counter. And I realized it's my son's phone. But having just pulled into the driveway, I can also see that my son isn't home because his car isn't there.
So now I'm even more confused. His phone is there, but he's not. And my husband's on the phone.
So I still don't have any information. Now I'm thinking my son's left his phone at home. So not only is he not sharing his location with us, but now he's completely unreachable.
My friend, it is amazing how many places our brains go with the little information that they have. So finally, my husband gets off the phone and he tells me our son dropped his phone and it smashed. It's not working anymore.
So the new phone doesn't arrive till tomorrow. And now I'm like, okay, so that answers the unfollow question. All of a sudden it makes sense.
He didn't wake up today and decide to stop sharing his location with me. He just dropped his phone. So that settled that.
I went out with my friend. I continued on with my evening. Fine.
So I get home later. He's still not home. And I'm not really anticipating at this point that he's going to be home anytime soon.
So I go to bed. And my husband's still up. And maybe there's a part of my mind that thought, okay, he's going to be on top of where my son is if he needs anything.
Now, keep in mind that this is a kid who's been at college for the past year where we don't track his location regularly. And I'm not checking up on him in the middle of the night or worrying about when he gets home. But a large part of that has to do, I realize, with him being on a college campus.
If he's going out at night, he's typically walking home. There's a bit more imagined safety there. Maybe it's not even real.
But in my mind, there's less risk. And it's not even that I don't trust my son. It's just that driving around at 3 a.m. doesn't feel like the safest thing.
So notice how my mind has created a difference between my son's safety at college, where for some reason my mind has decided he's safe and I don't need to keep track of him. But when he's home and driving around at night, I perceive that he's not safe. And therefore, I do feel like I need to keep track of him.
Does any of this sound familiar? So that night, I'd gone to bed, assuming my husband would be on top of things. But of course, I wake up at 3 a.m. And I want to freely admit this because I know I'm not the only one. I wake up thinking, where is he? I wonder if he made it home.
So I go to my phone, and I immediately realize I can't track him. I don't have the ability to see his location because his phone is broken. So now I'm lying there in bed.
And my friend, I have to tell you, it was the most uncomfortable feeling, lying there without information about whether he was home. And here's where it gets even more interesting. We got a new puppy.
Yes, we got an empty nest puppy. And at this point, he's nine months old. But he's a coonhound.
And he's incredibly sensitive to sound. So anytime I get up in the middle of the night, he's up and ready to hang out. He sleeps in a crate in our room.
So getting up in the middle of the night becomes this mission impossible exercise of trying to tiptoe out without making any sound so I don't wake him up and end up having to take him out or settle him down. So it's 3 a.m. And what I really want to do is get up and check to see if my son is home. And I'm lying there debating it.
And if the dog wasn't a factor, I would have been up without a thought. I would have just gotten up, looked out the window to see if my son's car was in the driveway. So I continue to lie there really uncomfortably, noticing where my mind is going for a few minutes.
And finally, I decide, you know what, I'm not going to be able to go back to sleep until I know. I just have to have this confirmation of whether or not my son is here. And I just want to point out what's going on in my mind at this point.
I don't have the information my brain feels like it needs in order to feel safe. But me checking outside to see if there's a car in the driveway isn't going to change the reality in any way, shape or form. But because I don't know what that reality is, I'm left simply imagining what it is.
And of course, my mind goes to the worst case scenario. He didn't make it home. Something's wrong.
There was an accident. Who knows? That's where my brain is going, which is why it's so uncomfortable to just be lying there without the information. Think about it.
Me checking doesn't change a thing. But it was so uncomfortable to not have the information because I was just left sitting with these imagined worst case scenarios. So I got up.
I tiptoed to our window and tried to look outside. And for whatever reason, every light outside in our front yard and at the park across the street was off at that hour. And so I couldn't see the driveway clearly enough to see whether or not there was a car parked there.
So I still didn't have the information I needed. But I got back in And I lay down and I thought, OK, you know what? I have to let this go. I don't want to wake up the dog.
And I'm lying there trying not to think about it, tossing and turning. And my brain is not letting this go. So I ended up going back to the window, being as silent as I possibly could, craning my neck against the glass, trying not to have the glass shift under my weight.
And I see out of corner of my eye a car in a place where I knew there wasn't a car before. And instantly I'm relieved. He's OK.
He's home. So I got back in bed. But then my brain didn't stop.
So my son has type one diabetes and he uses his phone to manage his blood sugar. And the phone gives him alerts when he's high or he's low. He also uses his phone to give himself insulin.
And the phone usually interacts with his insulin pump so that it can help him respond to severe highs and lows automatically. Not only that, but his phone allows us to have visibility into his glucose numbers so that we can see if he's on the right track. So now I'm lying here thinking, OK, he's safe.
He's home. But what if his blood sugar is going low? And this is what our brains do, my friend. It is so fascinating.
Have you ever had that experience where one problem is solved and your brain immediately finds another one? Like, what else can I worry about? What else can I try to fix? So now I've solved one worst case scenario and my brain has immediately found the next one. He's home. He's safe.
And now I'm thinking about his blood sugar. And I'm literally thinking in my head, I could go get a glucose tester. I could go into my 19-year-old son's room in the middle of the night while he's sleeping.
This 230-pound young man, I can prick his finger with a needle in the middle of the night and find out exactly what his blood sugar is. My friend, I really thought about it. Because again, without the information, my brain was just going to the worst case scenario.
And having the information just felt like it would put me at ease. But I would have to find the tester, which is buried in some closet because we don't have to use it that often anymore. And then I'd have to go into my son's room, find him in the dark.
And he would most certainly pull away from me when I tried to grab his hand in the middle of the night to prick it with a needle. And so at that point, I made an active decision to let it go. I decided I needed to stop indulging in the worst case scenario.
None of what I was imagining was reality. I was just playing out these scenarios in my mind over and over, as if somehow agonizing over them was going to solve something, or give me the right answer, or give me some power to avert whatever danger I was imagining. And look, I think in our lives as moms, there have definitely been times where we've had intuition about something, times where we followed up and we did avert danger.
So I don't think we're wrong to worry. I think this is actually a practiced habit that's actually served our kids and us well in so many instances throughout their lives. But you get to a point with your adult child where all you're really doing is living a version of life that feels terrible, just hoping for some piece of information or confirmation that will give you a sense of peace.
We do this all the time as moms, not just by checking our kids' location on Find My iPhone or Life 360. We do it by checking their text messages. We do it by looking online at the portal for their grades.
We reach out to their teachers. We ask other moms if they know anything. Our kids don't give us all the information that we feel like we need in order to feel safe, so we go looking for it.
And that's not to say that's wrong. I'm not here to judge, and I've clearly shown you in the story that I have those same instincts, and sometimes I act on them. But here's what I want to ask you, and I want you to really sit with this for a minute.
When you're lying awake at 3 a.m. or checking your kids' location or scanning the portal for grades, what are you actually afraid of? Now, the first answer is obvious. You worry something terrible has happened or might happen, that they're hurt or they're failing, they're making bad choices. And I'm not going to dismiss those fears because they're real.
Our fears are valid. There isn't anything in the world I wouldn't do to help keep my boys safe and on the right track. And as I said, there have been times when we just know something's wrong.
We call it mother's intuition. I swear there have been many times throughout my younger son's life when I've woken up in the middle of the night before we had any of this fancy technology that tracked his blood sugar, and I would wake up and I'd test him and he'd be very low. Somehow I knew something had woken me up and I was able to save him from danger.
And that history, all those years of being right and catching problems before they became big problems, all the years when you showed up right when your kid needed you, it's like our nervous systems remember every single time the worry was warranted. So it keeps you on alert, at the ready, just in case. And it makes so much sense.
And yet, now that our kids are older, our vigilance doesn't actually change what our kids choose to do. We can monitor and track and check on them and lie awake at night running through worst-case scenarios, and our kids are still going to do the thing they're going to do. We don't actually have the power to change that.
We never did, actually. We just had more proximity to them, maybe more visibility into their lives. What we really had when our kids were little was a greater ability to influence their emotions and choices, but somewhere along the way we confused that visibility and influence with control.
So yes, there's the fear that something might happen, but underneath that there's usually another fear, one that's not quite as obvious. Maybe it's that something will happen that you could have prevented, that the worst-case scenario in your mind will actually happen, and that you'll look back and think that you could have done something differently to change it. Or maybe you fear that your kid will struggle and you won't be there to support them.
Maybe it's that you won't know what to do if something does go wrong. Or is it that if something goes wrong, it will mean you failed, that all of the years of worry and sacrifice weren't enough? Because these fears don't get fixed by checking your kid's location. And that's why the relief never lasts.
You close the app, and 20 minutes later you're opening it again. Or you see your son's home and now you're wondering about his blood sugar. You find out her grades are fine, and now you're worried about next semester.
The target keeps moving, and it will keep moving forever, because the thing you're actually trying to solve for isn't out there in the world. It's inside of you. And here's what I really want you to hear, because I think this is the part that we don't talk about enough.
When you live inside those worst-case scenarios, when you lie awake at night playing them over and over in your mind, you are already living in that terrible reality. But it hasn't happened. Your kid is fine right now in this moment, but you are already in the pain of it.
And that, my friend, is not making your kid any safer. It's just making you feel terrible. And think about the ongoing cost of this.
Not just one night, but night after night. The sleep you don't get. The dinners where you're physically there but mentally somewhere else.
Replaying those worst-case scenarios. The conversations where you're reacting in ways that make your big kid share less, which only increases your worry. My friend, there is a version of your life that you are not living because you're so busy living every possible version of your kid's life that might go wrong.
That is the cost. And most of us don't even see it because it feels so much like love. But that 3am spiral, it's not being driven by love.
It's being driven by fear. And often it's fear that's been there for so long it starts to feel like who you are now. Here's the question we need to start asking ourselves.
Now that our kids are becoming more independent, do you trust yourself to handle what comes? I don't know that we spend any time trying to access that self-trust. Instead, we focus on what to do, what to fix, the boundaries to set, or the conversations we need to have. But we don't focus enough on what it looks like to handle the uncertainty of life with our kids without getting wrapped up in fear and frustration and self-doubt.
The truth is, we've spent the past 20 years in a role where our job was to know, to anticipate and fix. But the job has changed. And unfortunately, no one gave us the updated job description.
So the solution here actually isn't more information. It's knowing what to do when the fear comes up, how to recognize what's happening in your mind, and how to feel your emotions without being completely consumed by them. Really, how to sit in the not knowing without it turning into a 3 a.m. spiral.
That is actually a skill. And like any skill, it's something that you build. And this is exactly what we do inside of Mom 2.0. Because this stage of motherhood requires tools that nobody ever taught us.
And I know you wish someone could just hand you a roadmap, tell you exactly what to do, when to step in, and when to let go. But the truth is, there are no perfect answers here. What there is, is the ability to learn how to trust yourself to navigate all of it.
To let go of the need to control and to own your emotions so they stop keeping you awake at 3 a.m. This is what becomes possible inside of Mom 2.0. And you can do it in a small group, or you can work through it with me one-on-one. The same work, the same transformation, in a room that works for you. My friend, if you've ever pressed your face against a dark window at 3 a.m., hoping for a glimpse of your kid's car, you are not alone.
In fact, you are a mom who loves her kid. And sometimes the uncertainty around whether they're okay can feel unbearable. That love is not the problem.
In fact, the fear itself is not the problem. The problem is that no one taught us how to love our kids this much. And also, let go of that fear when it comes.
Until next time, my friend.
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.
