All the rules. It’s only possible to have kids and work full-time if you set up all the rules.
The wake-ups, the bedtimes, the washing, the cooking, the cleaning, the pick-ups, the drop-offs and later, the curfews.
We love them all so much, those tiny toddlers who turn into teenagers, but sometimes those structures feel like they are killing your soul. Dead. And if the worry doesn’t destroy you, the exhaustion will eat your bones.
Then one day you wake up and they are gone. The kids. The rules. The endless structure. Waiting for the key in the door at 4am.
Yes, it’s true, some women feel sad when their kids are set free. The big sooks.
Me? I danced nude down our hallway. Then I danced to New York and to Paris with clothes on – because cold.
To be honest, I’m one of the lucky ones. Not one of our children stayed past their 19th birthday, a clear indictment of my parenting.
They knew that if they planned to live in the family home – and were no longer in the grip of the hideous final years of school – that they would have to be equal partners. Cooking at least once a week, washing their own clothes, replacing the petrol in the car when they’d driven to farflung beaches and back, earn enough money to indulge their love of both kinds of Nudie, earn enough money not to keep asking us for support. I’m demanding like that.
Related: Spending time with the families we choose over Christmas.
Wendy Aronsson writes in her 2014 book, Refeathering the Empty Nest: Life after the Children Leave, one-half of parents are not emotionally prepared for their children to leave home. And she says that in one study, 23 per cent of parents were profoundly unhappy when their kids left home.