I Don't Want My Daughter to Follow in My Footsteps

Yes I know, no one ever said that being a parent would be easy.  Honestly I think back to the hard time I gave my mother when I was in high school and consider myself pretty darn lucky to have the kind of relationship with my kids that I do.  Each of them are so different, but there has been a common theme in our family of deepest respect for honesty and truth. It was really them who taught me the true value of being this way in relationship to them.  I stay open to hearing the truth, they deliver it. And, for the most part this has felt good. Yes, there have been times where hearing the truth was hard. Either because it made me look at some part of myself that I was not ready to see, or because I was not thrilled with the information being delivered.  Yet hands down, I would still rather hear the truth, and not like it, than to put anyone in the position of lying to me. As I see it, hiding rarely feels good to anyone.

So, when my daughter Laurel (aka Coco, Lucinda, LuLu) came home one day after school and said “Momma, I want to talk to you”, I was not overly concerned.  Yet truthfully, nothing could have prepared me for the conversation that unfolded. Mom, she said, I have been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of research.  “I want to go to boarding school”. It really threw me for a loop. My kids and I have been through a lot together and Laurel and I share a very close bond. So there I sat speechless and dizzy, completely unsure of how to respond.  I mean in my head it was pretty clear how to respond, “absolutely not”. No way! It will be hard enough when you are 18 and leaving for college, now you are 15, and I am not ready for you to leave. No, what are you even thinking?  Sigh.

So, many things have happened between then and now.  And yes, Laurel is away at boarding school. And while it was a hard adjustment for me to make, I now know that it is and was the best thing for my daughter.  She had the wisdom to see that she was ready for more independence than our relationship would easily allow for. She needs to be part of a broader approach to teaching that encourages her to make mistakes for the value of learning.  And while I miss her, I find strength in watching her grow into the amazing person that she is today because of this decision.

It has become somewhat of an unplanned ritual that we take back to school mommy-daughter selfies in the car.  This is just one of the many new traditions that we have found as a way to celebrate this change in our relationship.