Realizing that they are really grown

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This isn't AS/ASD related really, just parenting in general and I didn't know where else to put it, so here it is.

As parents we spend years raising our kids with the goal of making them responsible adults. Why does it come as a sudden shock when we realize that they are adults?

It was hard to let my oldest go, and he was living at home until he was 20, and he kind of gradually moved out little by little but I had accepted that he was grown by then. My oldest daughter is 18 and a senior in high school and I've known that all year long but it's just now hit me.

Prom is this weekend and then graduation is the 24th and it's really sinking in that she won't be going to school anymore. She's going to college but that's different. She's also talking about moving out over the summer. She and her fiance are going to move into a house that his parents own and are renting out as soon as they can get the people in it now, out of it.

It's just a sudden shock to me I suppose. All year I've thought of it as sometime off in the future, but now it's, well, now.

Has anybody else gone through this and if so how did you handle it? I'm happy for her and happy that I've done my job well and she's turned out so good, but I'm also sad that she's not my little girl anymore and that's hard to take.

Thoughts?

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I don't know how to handle it. I'm DREADING it, and the oldest one turning 18 is still almost 8 years off. The day the first one leaves is the day the Earth shatters; when the last one leaves, the world ends.

I mean, I rather suspect NOT-- Pop was certainly eager that his little fledgling spread her wings and make some approximation of flight. My aunt has never seemed sorry to have her birdies fly back to the nest-- but never eager, either.

When I agonized over moving a thousand miles away, Pop said that even though he missed us, life went on and he rather enjoyed the quiet (at least, when the Steelers were playing). In retrospect, I rather suspect he was saying that to make us both feel better.

I can't fathom how to cope with it. Is there anything you've always wanted to do?? You've got all the time in the world for those intensive, um, "hobbies" of ours...

If I think of it, I'll ask my mother-in-law. But don't cope like my in-laws. They smoke a pack a day and watch entirely too much TV.

Oh, and-- Believe me, from a 34-year-old Daddy's girl-- She may be grown up, but she will ALWAYS be your little girl. Daddy's been dead for eighteen months now, and I STILL don't make a decision without pouring a cup of coffee and talking it over with him. NO KIDDING. If you don't believe me, just wait 'til she has a kid.

Mine is almost a year and a half already and I can remember when he was just an infant. Now I have to climb over gates just to get away from him when he keeps bugging me. He still has not figured out how to get over them or how to knock them down on purpose. he has already figured out how to turn door knobs so I put childproof ones over them He can push buttons now on the TV and on the cable box so I taped cardboard over them. He now knows how to take out a Wii game from the console and take out the DVD movie from the player. I can't keep movies and games in there anymore.

The ironic thing I see about all this is lot of parents are sad when their kids grow up and they wish they could stay little forever but yet when they find out they want to wear diapers or have been wearing them or even find a pacifier or bottle in their room, they freak out and go rushing them to the shrink's office or telling them they are sick and the whole thing is sick and twisted and they don't want to baby them. Or they worry about they have done something wrong as a parent raising them. Both my parents blame themselves on this, just the diapers. I am not sure what they think of the baby things they have found and caught me with.

It's also ironic how they even want them to act their age, move out, be responsible, get a job and not mooch off them for free but yet they are sad about how they have grown up and how older they have gotten?


Sometimes this all makes sense and sometimes it doesn't.

With my older ones, even though they may act like adults and consider themselves adults and the world may consider them adults, as soon as they get sick they are 5 again. It never fails. I'm no longer "Mom" I'm "Mommy" and I need to set them up on the couch with a "blankie" and juice with a bendy straw and even bring a coloring book and crayons and the remote and bring them toast with the crust cut off, etc.

I remember that while my oldest (23) could throw up just fine on his own from a hangover, if he had a stomach bug he needed me to stand there in the bathroom beside him and pet his head while he threw up. My older daughter has an ongoing chronic GI problem where she throws up mucos every morning and she does that just fine on her own with the bathroom door shut and locked and she's quiet about it. When she gets a stomach bug she needs a garbage can to throw up in from the couch and I have to be by her.

My oldest had his appendix out when he was 21 and was in the hospital two days after because he couldn't pee and had a catheter. I had to stay with him and thats when I started smoking again. Not during the surgery, I wasn't worried about that it was simple laser surgery. It was after he woke up and became the most spoiled, demanding little child imaginable. He has a needle phobia and the IV that was in there, while not a needle, was enough to send him into perpetual panic so I had to get sheets and tape and construct a tent over it to keep it out of his sight. He couldn't move that arm, so he couldn't move the other arm either, and I had to do everything for him, itch him, adjust the covers, give him a drink, feed him, change the tv etc. Plus he wanted to go smoke and they wouldn't let him. This is when I went out to smoke. Finally, on the second day after no sleep and fed up, I told the nurses (who were fed up with him too) that I was just getting a chair and taking him out anyway. They said they couldn't give permission but sure wouldn't stop me. I took him out to the smoking area, parked him, and went inside and called my husband from a pay phone and told him he had 30 minutes to get up there and stay with him or I was leaving him where he was. There was a girl his age in the smoking area so he was instantly 21 again and fine.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

My mum had a very hard time realizing that I was all grown up for years. She would always try to have some control over me and I would always rebel. She realized that I was all grown up when I've started living on my own, 6 years ago in November. I would have moved out sooner, but I didn't think that subsidized living was available for people in their 20s and 30s.