UNCONDITIONAL CONNECTION: WHAT PARENTS WEEKEND TAUGHT ME ABOUT LETTING GO WHEN YOUR TEEN OR ADULT KID HAS LESS TIME FOR YOU | EP. 295
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 been so excited to spend time with your kid, only to realize that they don't seem nearly as excited to spend time with you? Maybe it happens on parent's weekend. Or maybe they come home from college and immediately make plans with friends. Or maybe your high school kid doesn't make any time with you when they're not glued to their phone. It's hard not to wonder, are we as close as we used to be? In this episode, I want to talk about unconditional connection and how to stop measuring your relationship with your big kid by how much time, attention, or reassurance they give you so that you can enjoy the connection that's there without constantly needing proof that you still matter. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. Parent's weekend. Oh my goodness.
This is apparently a weekend that is just fraught with disappointment. The other day, I was talking to a mom who had just come back from parent's weekend with her daughter. And when I asked her how it went, she said, it was a horror show.
I laughed so hard. Then I talked to another mom literally the next day, who described her parent's weekend with her kid at college as disappointing. And when I told her she was by no means alone, she said, oh, that's so good to hear.
I honestly thought I was the only one. And I have to tell you, I feel so grateful that I get to talk to so many different women about their experience of motherhood, because there are just so many things we don't talk about in our normal lives. There are no doubt moms who go to parent's weekend with their big kid, and they have the most wonderful time.
Their kid's thrilled to see them, and they spend the whole weekend together. Everybody's happy. And then there are others of us who really struggle.
And probably, if we're honest, more often than not, there's some combination of both. There are these beautiful moments of connection mixed in with disappointment and unmet expectations, and maybe a little bit of, wait a minute, we drove all this way, and you don't really want to spend time with me? Now, I'm opening here with stories about parent's weekend. But this challenge we face in connecting with our kids in the ways we want is by no means limited to connecting with our college kids.
We can feel disconnected to our kids when they're still living at home, and also once they've left college. So no matter what age your big kid is, there's going to be a lesson here for you. But let me start by sharing that I am also just back from parent's weekend with my youngest son.
As I mentioned before, he transferred schools this year. So for us, it was a little bit of an odd parent's weekend because technically, I don't even think we were really supposed to be there. It was more geared toward freshmen and their families.
But I remember booking our reservations almost immediately after he decided to transfer. And looking back, I'm not even sure I asked him if he wanted us to come. I just assumed.
I mean, of course we were going to parent's weekend. Fast forward a few months, and we realized that parent's weekend was literally three weeks after we dropped him off. And not only that, but it was right in the middle of rush.
But we'd reserved an Airbnb, and we were excited to see him. And so my husband and I drove six hours up to see him. We got there late Thursday night, and we just stopped by his dorm to check in with him, and he looked absolutely exhausted.
Then Friday he had classes, so we left him alone most of the day. But we planned to meet up with him around three o'clock. And finally, we see him.
We walked around campus for a little bit. We unloaded some things from the car. And then after maybe an hour and a half, he says, okay, I'm going to go see a friend.
And I was like, oh, okay. So here we are. We were here to spend time with him.
We'd waited all day to see him. And now he was going to see a friend. So of course we let him, and we planned to connect for dinner.
And dinner was fine. He was tired and distracted and honestly stressed out about rush. And of course, because I'm his mother, I started offering little suggestions and advice, even though I know absolutely nothing about rush.
But then we dropped him back at his dorm because of course he had to go out again that night. And honestly, by this time it was way past my bedtime anyway. But we said, okay, what's the plan for tomorrow? And he answered immediately and said, I'll see you for dinner.
So we had driven six hours to visit my son, who was staying approximately 12 minutes from our Airbnb. And apparently for all of that effort, we'd essentially gotten two dinners out of him. But this is where the story gets interesting.
And not because of what my son was doing, but because of what my brain wanted to start doing. I mean, first I could feel myself getting pulled into everything he was dealing with. I could see that he was discouraged.
And so, of course, I felt myself feeling worried for him. And believe me, there is nothing in me that actually wants my son to be in a fraternity. But I also knew how much being a part of the social scene at the school means to him, especially as a transfer who doesn't yet know anyone.
So because he wanted it, I wanted it for him. And so I could see my mind already projecting into the future, worries about what would happen if he didn't get a bid anywhere. And I had to catch myself because I realized I was falling into that trap of needing my son's experience to be better so that I could feel better.
It's something I covered last week in the podcast, a mindset trap I call emotional outsourcing. But I could actually also see my mind getting pulled into another version of this as well. And this is actually the version that's been coming up with a lot of the moms I've been talking with recently, both for those with kids in college, as well as those with kids at many other ages.
The thought is essentially, why don't you want to connect with me? So whether it's parents weekend, or just dinnertime, or even those moments when your kid is rushing through the house, in our minds, we have a picture of how those moments are supposed to go. We hope they'll be excited to spend time with us, or at least interested in having a conversation with us. We'd actually love it if they'd open up to us, share a bit about what's going on in their lives.
We'd also, if we're honest, love a little affection, maybe a hug, or a random I love you. Maybe just a bit of positive feedback that lets us know that we still matter to our big kid. Because when we get this, when these moments look like what we hope they will, then we get to feel close and connected.
But notice what happens when our expectations aren't met. One mom phrased it to me this way. She said, clearly I don't matter to him as much as he matters to me.
And I think that thought captures so much of what can feel painful about this stage of motherhood. Because I think most of us would say without hesitation that we love our kids unconditionally. We love them no matter what they do, or who they become.
But as I've raised my boys, I've really thought a lot about this idea of unconditional love, and wondering whether what sometimes feels a lot more conditional is our ability to feel connected to them. Because I think what we don't consciously realize is that we have in our head a list of behaviors that our kids need to deliver in order for us to get to feel the way we want to feel in the relationship. We want them to call or text us back, tell us what's going on, and we want them to spend time with us, be happy to see us.
And so when our kids do do those things, it feels amazing. And in those moments it's obviously so easy to think that we're close. They still need me.
I still matter to them. The problem is that when our kids don't do those things, our minds are very quick to offer the opposite story. Maybe we're not as close as I thought.
In fact, it seems like she's pulling away from me. She doesn't want to tell me anything, and he always wants to be with his friends. I guess I'm just not that important to them anymore.
Now, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't want to be close to our kids. I mean, of course we do. There is no doubt that I wanted to spend more time with my son over parent's weekend.
I adore this kid, and I drove six hours because I wanted to see him. In fact, if he had said, Mom, I cleared the whole day on Saturday. Let's hang out.
I would have been over the moon. I'd also love for my boys to call me more. I'd love for them to tell me every detail of their lives.
And when they're home, I'd love to have long dinners with them and hugs and all these beautiful signs that say, Mom, you are still so important to me. There is nothing wrong with wanting any of that. The question I think it's worth asking is, what are we making it mean when we don't get it? Because there is a difference between saying, I wish he wanted to spend more time with me, and saying, the fact that he doesn't want to spend more time with me right now means we aren't close.
Or, I'd love for her to call me more often, versus if she loved me more, she would call. What I want to invite you to consider is that there is a difference between wanting a certain kind of relationship with your kid and requiring your kid to behave a certain way before you allow yourself to feel secure in the relationship you already have. I sometimes think about how hard it is to be a teen or adult kid in this world.
How they're constantly being bombarded with texts and social media and all these comparisons with not only the people in front of them, but people all over the world, telling them who they should be and what they're not living up to. And that's on top of the normal stress of just figuring out who they are, how to navigate friendships, figuring out how to be responsible for themselves and for their goals in life. And meanwhile, they're on their own emotional roller coaster, processing everything going on in their world, trying to make sense of it.
But sometimes, without meaning to, I think we can give them this additional responsibility to continually reassure us that we still matter to them. And I'm not sharing this as a judgment. In fact, I think it makes so much sense that we do this.
Because for years, our kids didn't have to prove that we mattered. It was just built into our lives. When they were little, they depended on us for everything.
Of course we mattered. And we were also responsible for so much. We knew where they were at all times.
We drove them everywhere and ate every meal together. And by virtue of all of that, we knew their teachers and their friends and what tests they had tomorrow. There were a thousand little points of contact every single day that continually reinforced the connection we felt like we had with our kids.
And then they start to grow up. They closed the bedroom door more often. They start driving themselves.
They also spend more time with friends, eventually go to college. And they build lives that increasingly happen somewhere outside of our view. And now we don't get all of those automatic reminders of how much we mean to them, how important we are in their lives.
Also, those reminders of connection. So our brains start looking for new evidence to understand what our relationship is right now. How often did he call? Did she make time for me? Are they telling me what's really going on? And how much time did he give us on parent's weekend? Our brains are essentially collecting evidence that we still matter, or maybe evidence that we don't.
But what if some of the evidence we're collecting actually has very little to do with us? The truth is, our kids' behavior is actually about them. But if we're honest, for us, more often than not, when your kid doesn't call, it feels like it's about you. And when they come home and immediately go to their room, it feels like they're avoiding you.
Or when they'd rather go out with their friends than spend time with you, it also feels like it's about you. And definitely, when you drive six hours to parent's weekend and your son says, great, I'll see you for dinner tomorrow, believe me, it feels a little bit like it's about you. But by and large, most of the time, our kids truly aren't walking around making decisions based on what they're trying to communicate to us or what message those decisions are going to send to us.
They're just living their lives. They're trying to figure out who they are, thinking about friendships and school and what people think of them, what they think of themselves. They're essentially trying really hard to belong in their life.
They're trying to become more independent. And so naturally, a lot of their attention is focused inward. That doesn't mean they stop loving us or that we don't matter.
It may just mean that in this particular season, something else has their attention. And there is a big part of me that really wants to believe that they feel so secure in their connection to us that they don't feel like they have to perform, that they know no matter what that we will always be there. That does not mean that this isn't hard.
The truth is we do experience a very real loss as our kids grow up. We lose that day-to-day closeness. We also lose old versions of the relationship.
We lose that kid who used to come running into the room to tell us everything. The one who needed us for almost every part of their life. I think about how this son who didn't want to spend time with me on parents weekend used to say to me all the time, Mom, do you want to play? Motherhood can feel like a million little losses as we let go of past versions of our kids.
And I think it's important that we let ourselves acknowledge that. But I also think it's valuable for us to be really clear with ourselves about how we view connection in this stage of motherhood. We talk all the time about loving our kids unconditionally.
We understand that concept almost instinctively. Would you really think about what that means? We're telling ourselves, I love my kid no matter what they do, no matter who they are or how they act. There's nothing they can do to negate my feelings of love for them.
So we say we feel unconditional love for them, love without conditions. But I think sometimes what we do make conditional is our ability to feel loved by them as if there's something they can do or not do to take away that feeling of being loved. It's kind of interesting when you think about it, that we're really saying that there's a particular set of behaviors that we want from our kid in order for us to feel their love.
And sometimes our kids can be really mean and dismissive. It's honestly easy to feel hurt or disconnected. But isn't it interesting that we let our connection with our kids be conditional even though we tell ourselves our love for them is unconditional? I mean the truth is the majority of the time when I ask a woman I'm talking to whether or not she really thinks her kid doesn't love her, she'll typically pause and she'll say, no I think my kid really does love me, even if they don't show it all the time.
And if that resonates with you, I want to invite you to consider something. If you can love someone unconditionally, why can't you also feel connected to that person unconditionally? Our kids at this stage of life can be incredibly self-focused. They're focused on themselves, on figuring out and filling their own needs.
And they're not spending a whole lot of energy worrying about what we need. But we can intellectually know that their behavior is probably appropriate for where they are in life. Yet our brains still want to make it a problem, to tell us what's happening that shouldn't be happening.
But in the midst of all of this, I wonder if we could just remind ourselves that our kids' behavior is truly about them. Their actions, the way they show up, all of that is about them and their experience of life in this moment. What we do know to be true is that we love these young people more than anything in the world.
And if what this person who you love more than anything, what they need right now is a bit of space and a bit of flexibility to figure out who they are, I wonder if that might be a gift that we can decide to give them. Maybe we can let our kids off the hook for having to prove their love for us, for having to prove and validate our need for connection just so that we can get to feel the emotions that we want to feel. And I'm not actually talking about lowering your expectations or telling yourself to stop wanting connection from your kid.
What I'm really suggesting is that we let go of the need for our kids to continually prove the connection before we allow ourselves to feel it. What if your son not calling this week doesn't automatically mean you're drifting apart? What if your daughter wanting to spend Saturday night with her friends didn't have to mean that you matter less to her? What if your kid being distracted at dinner doesn't mean he doesn't love you? And what if my son just giving me a couple dinners on parents weekend didn't have anything to do with the strength of our relationship? This is what I mean by unconditional connection. It's not pretending that you don't want more.
It's truly being able to say, I would love more time with you. I would love for you to tell me everything. And at the same time, I'm not going to make the absence of those things mean that our connection isn't strong or that it's slipping away.
I can miss my son and still feel connected to him no matter how much time I spend with him. And I can also feel disappointed in a moment without turning that disappointment into a story about what our entire relationship means. My friend, I've learned this lesson a long time ago.
And so what actually happened this weekend is I did not spend one moment feeling annoyed or let down because my son was distracted and didn't have much time to spend with me. In fact, even just considering how much he was juggling that weekend, I was grateful for every minute he did give me. And so no matter what, I get to feel connected to him.
This is unconditional connection. My friend, if you're listening and thinking, but Jennifer, I don't know how to accept what little connection I get. I don't want to just be happy with what I'm getting.
I hear you. But I want to invite you to consider that embracing unconditional connection does not mean you have to accept less connection. It actually means that you invite more connection because you stop pressuring your kid to give you something you need to feel connected to them.
Learning how to do this is the work we do inside of Mom 2.0. You'll learn how to notice when you're emotionally outsourcing your well-being and your sense of connection to your kid. And you'll also learn how to decide how you want to show up, even when your kid isn't showing up exactly the way you wish they would. I'm not going to teach you how to get your kid to call more or how to make them open up.
What I'm actually going to do is help you stop feeling like your emotional well-being is entirely dependent on what they do or what they don't do. This is the work we do in Mom 2.0. You can learn more through the link in the show notes. My friend, I know this part of motherhood can hurt.
We miss our kids and we do want more of them. And sometimes we just want some reassurance that we still matter as much as they matter to us. But maybe we don't have to keep asking our kids to prove that to us.
Maybe we consider that we could trust the connection and let the relationship keep changing without deciding that something precious has been lost. You actually can miss your kid and still feel close to them. You can want more and still know that what you have matters.
And maybe that is one of the gifts that you can give yourself in this stage of motherhood. 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.
