There are times I come away from another unpleasant interaction with my teen thinking, I actually do not have the mettle for this. This job was devised for souls hardier than me, and I’m really not sure I can pull it off. My circumstances, of course, are exacerbated by the fact that my husband works overseas, so a lot of the time I’m doing it alone and am frequently outnumbered in our home. And lately I find myself regaining some semblance of control by taking a mug of tea into my bedroom and shutting the door and googling boarding schools in the area. And I have to chuckle inwardly as I contemplate how the wheel has turned: my own mom got through my most unruly teenage episodes by keeping the application forms to a strict, military-style boarding school visible on the kitchen counter. The fear of being sent there was real enough to jolt me back to common sense.
But somehow my mom did get through it, also mostly on her own, and I know I can too. And it’s like my daughter has a sixth sense for when I’m on my last parenting legs and she’ll ask me to drop her off at the ice-cream shop. Only she won’t spend her money there – she’ll walk the length of the main road on one of the hottest days of the year and buy me a bunch of my favourite sunflowers and present them to me at the door, hot, sweaty and grinning. And in that moment she’s just my sweet, eager-to-please little girl again. There was a time, before I had kids of my own, when I was secretly appalled when people told me they weren’t going to have children. Now, I totally get it. I look at those same people and think, Yes, you made the right choice. This task requires too much selflessness, too much sacrifice. You knew it was not for you and bravo for that.
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At the same time, I know too that parenthood gives some of the very best things life has to offer. And for every time you want to lock yourself in a dark room and go foetal, there’ll be moments that fill your soul with a richness and a sense of purpose that not much else on this planet is able to match. It might be arriving at school in the afternoon and discovering that five, not two, 13-year-olds need a lift to dancing, and grinning as they find ways of squeezing themselves into your car, colonising the sound system and squealing as they spot the boy they’re all crushing on crossing the road. Or the times they’ll open up to you about their lives and their thoughts on the world and you’re struck by how grounded they actually are, how self-confident, smart and feisty, and you’ll feel a deep satisfaction that you helped mould these fabulous little humans.
And if you ever have the inclination to be smug about how clued-up you are about life, raising kids rapidly takes you down a couple of notches. This job is about instinct, common sense and more guesswork than our kids can ever know. Parenting children, especially teens, is a deeply humbling experience. You get it right, you get it wrong, you look at each other in bewilderment as the child you love more than the moon and stars storms off into her room again. And you develop a deep and abiding gratitude for the members of your village: the grannies, friends, moms and dads on the other end of the phone who listen, laugh, advise and match your stories with a few of their own. There’s an Afrikaans expression that goes Jou beurt is jou beurt. It can be applied to many situations, but during the most trying, impossible moments of parenthood they are good words to bear in mind. As well as the fact that this, too, shall pass.
Susan Hayden is the voice behind the popular blog Disco Pants & A Mountain
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