learning to let go

I think he’s attached. The signs are all there. And I find myself being silently protective of him.
It’s strange how my "motherly instincts" rears its head… when he goes for marathons, triathlons, wakeboarding, boozing, clubbing. It’s strange coz I’ve done them too (oh, ok, except the marathons and triathlons). It’s strange coz he’s not even my son.
Which made me wonder how I’d feel when Glory starts “leaving the nest”. If I’m so protective over a smart, well-adjusted, strong young man who’s not even my son, wouldn’t I be a neurotic freak when it came to my own daughter? Would I devise ways and means to keep tabs on her friends and actions and whereabouts? Munch already decided to. He said she’d have to go straight home after school, and no boyfriends allowed. Till she’s like… 30 or something.
Daddies.*rolls eyes*
They say parenting is really a process of preparing a child for independence.
I suppose that’s true. One of the biggest things parents have to learn is to let go when the time is right.
I asked my mummy how she felt when I took boys home. Was she protective? Was she suspicious of them? Did they have to slowly earn her acceptance? Did she worry?
She said she was the other extreme. She started off by liking whomever her children liked.
That sounds pretty cool, and when I thought about it, it’s quite true. She’d worry loads when I went diving/trekking/bungee-jumping/wakeboarding/theme parks(yeah... she has this idea that the screws would come loose and the roller coaster cart would fly off the tracks...), but she has always “approved” of my boyfriends. Though she did interrogate me about their families, though she did fret about the “ancestry” of one of them (and I think she and daddy were secretly pleased when we stopped dating), she has always been nice to them.
She always seemed to believe I’d be wise and make good decisions. Maybe coz I’ve always been a responsible kid. Ahem ahem. Or maybe coz I knew which stories to tell her and which to leave out ;)
But I guess this confidence in one’s offspring comes with trusting that you have brought up your child as well as you know how. And the recognition that you are never meant to “control” the kid. Nor are you able to.
Well, Mummy gave me so much freedom, and yet I turned out to be more of a prude than she ever was. (she has Jesus to thank for that).
Know what? I hope Glory grows to be a prude too.