Grown Up and moving on...

[Sue Patterson]

This is a tough year for me. After spending so much of my life immersed in unschooling with my kids, they've grown some pretty strong wings and are leaving the nest.

Michael is 22, finished college in May, and is going to Nicaragua with the Peace Corps...did I mention it's a 27-month deployment????
Katie, 20, was accepted into the New York Film Academy and moves into student housing in Manhattan.
Both of these are happening at the end of the month.

Alyssa, 17, started the Vidal Sassoon Cosmetology school, which takes her Monday-Friday from 9-5. When she's not there, she's with her boyfriend. Luckily they spend most of the time here, but it's not really the same.

So...

I know, "roots & wings." And, yes, I am very proud of all of them. But I feel pretty teary lots of the time. Could be because I'm in the throes of menopause, but that's just what is.

 

Anyone else going through this?

[Sarah S.]

Me! I have one daughter, now 18, and have been a single mom the whole way through so for 18 years it's been the two of us happily unschooling... and now she's headed off to college almost a thousand miles away. She's pretty thrilled about it - she'll be living in a city full of world-famous museums taking all the classes she wants in subjects that she loves, and on the weekends she plans to keep playing rugby and go to concerts with bands that never come to our city. So, in one sense it's nice to be able to say hey, we did it. The result of the unschooling "experiment" (as my brother put it when she was 5 or so) is a smart, happy, confident, kind, beautiful 18 year old who is doing exactly what she wants to do. But God, I will miss her so much, and I dread her leaving, and the thought of coming home to a quiet empty house every day kills me...

 

So, yeah. I'm struggling with this. And I know she'll miss me, too, because she says she will, and she's always unabashedly overjoyed to see me when we've been apart for a while... but she's moving on and I'm being left behind, which I guess is as it should be, but it's not easy.

[Ester Siroky]

Coincidently, something we talked about today with a friend.
Her daughter is to leave home next week and she feels a bit lost. She also has a son who is 15 years.
I am not there yet, but might not be long to go as our eldest is coming on to 19 years.
I feel tearful only thinking about it!! I am lucky though, to have 5 other children - 2 years the youngest...
I know that it is how it should be BUT!!!
I think, that it surely must be one of the hardest times a parent goes through and I hope that as we will hopefully see happy and content people in our children, it will ease the emotional roller-coaster.
But I know already that I will 'grieve' the company of my children!
It must be so much harder for a single parent, as there are no others to distract you!!!
I am thinking of you Sarah!

[Sue Patterson]

Sarah, your situation sounds really hard - I teared up thinking about it! I'm glad we are writing about it here So we can support each other. Since you're a single mom, did you work? Will you stay with that or change something? I know right now I am spending a lot of time getting the kids ready to go, but by sept.1st, it will all become very quiet around here. Have you made any plans for what you're going to be doing with her gone?

Sarah S. said:

Me! I have one daughter, now 18, and have been a single mom the whole way through so for 18 years it's been the two of us happily unschooling... and now she's headed off to college almost a thousand miles away. She's pretty thrilled about it - she'll be living in a city full of world-famous museums taking all the classes she wants in subjects that she loves, and on the weekends she plans to keep playing rugby and go to concerts with bands that never come to our city. So, in one sense it's nice to be able to say hey, we did it. The result of the unschooling "experiment" (as my brother put it when she was 5 or so) is a smart, happy, confident, kind, beautiful 18 year old who is doing exactly what she wants to do. But God, I will miss her so much, and I dread her leaving, and the thought of coming home to a quiet empty house every day kills me...

 

So, yeah. I'm struggling with this. And I know she'll miss me, too, because she says she will, and she's always unabashedly overjoyed to see me when we've been apart for a while... but she's moving on and I'm being left behind, which I guess is as it should be, but it's not easy.

[Sue Patterson]

It really IS an emotional roller coaster. Some days I am SOO happy for them.  And other days, it's particularly hard. For me, this captures it EXACTLY:

Ester Siroky said:
I will 'grieve' the company of my children!

[Sarah S.]

Sue Patterson said:

Sarah, your situation sounds really hard - I teared up thinking about it! I'm glad we are writing about it here So we can support each other. Since you're a single mom, did you work? Will you stay with that or change something? I know right now I am spending a lot of time getting the kids ready to go, but by sept.1st, it will all become very quiet around here. Have you made any plans for what you're going to be doing with her gone?

I've always worked, in one way or another, but I managed to be with Rain most of the time. In California I worked as a "teacher" for an independent study charter school for a while, when Rain was little, and she would come with me and play with the other kids... and after that we were fortunate that a wonderful friend allowed us to live rent-free on a farm so I was able to support us with my savings and some odd jobs.

For the last few years I've been working on a doctorate, so I've been teaching and doing research but I've had a flexible schedule and everyone in the department knows Rain... but we've also spent more and more time apart, as she's followed her own interests and I've followed mine. She spent 9 months in Russia - she left for Russia almost exactly 2 years ago, although I spent half of that time in Paris so it was a little different than being home without her - and this summer she spent 2 months working as a camp counselor, so I've only seen her for maybe a week. She actually just got home this afternoon, and brought a couple of the other counselors home with her for a couple of days, so they've been in and out tonight.

 

So I guess practically speaking we've spent a good bit of the past few years apart, but I was always able to look forward to her coming home... and now it doesn't feel like that anymore. I've built a lot of my life around being available to her, probably past the point that she really needed me to... but thinking of her needs is just second nature now. When she got home today I realized how many little things I'd been doing for her to prepare for her return - buying avocados and spinach and tomatoes, getting her prescription filled, washing her sheets and towels - because I've missed her. It's really hard to think that she may never really live here anymore

 

And when one or the other of us is gone we skype chat and text and talk on the phone, which we'll still be able to do, but it's not the same... Ester, the idea of grieving her company really fits for me, too. We're just so good together, 99% of the time - just going to the store or on a drive or to a museum is more fun with her than pretty much anyone else, because I really do just enjoy being with her. And it is a roller coaster, yes... I'm so excited and happy for her that she's found a way to do what she wants to do, and then I'm so sad to be losing her.

 

Thanks for starting this thread and giving me a chance to talk about this. I know a lot of unschooled kids Rain's age and older who have chosen to live at home - most of them, really - and somehow I get the kid who doesn't blink at going halfway around the world at 16 and has been eager to blow this town ever since she got back. This is the kid who nursed until almost 4, who I carried until she was 5 or so, who slept with me until 11 or 12...

 

Sue, what will you be doing with your days without your kids around? Even though my work and research will still be there, I'm not sure that will help me be less lonely (besides dating, I suppose... it is true that my dating life has picked up as Rain has been doing more things without me :)).

[Sue Patterson]

Sarah, I'm sorry I didn't get back to you on this. Suddenly I was just overwhelmed with the thoughts and the actual work involved with the kids moving out.  I think I'm going to write a book.  I might go back to school to be a Family/Adolescent counselor. Or maybe I'll skip the school part and become a Life Coach.  My house has been neglected and really needs to be spruced up. That's probably first on the agenda.

[Sue Patterson]

And, I just wrote in my blog about Katie and Michael leaving.  In the middle of Hurricane Irene!
"Hurricanes on Multiple Fronts"
http://suepatterson.blogspot.com/2011/09/hurricanes-on-multiple-fro...

[Sarah S.]

Rain is back from college for winter break, after a successful first semester - she has her own column on the school website, does a weekly radio show with her roommate, has lots of new friends, got a job working with kids, made the rugby team (but couldn't fit it into her schedule in the fall, but she'll be on the team in spring), succeeded in her classes... all lovely things. 

 She has a friend over and they just made an Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie n’ Oreo Fudge Brownie Bar... yummy! It's so nice to have her home

[Sue Patterson]

That sounds WONDERFUL, Sarah!! Enjoy the visit! Katie is here until Friday, so it's 2 weeks. She's heading back to NYC to watch the ball drop for New Year's Eve - if she can brave the crowds with her friend!  We Skyped with Michael for Christmas morning.  It sounds like Rain is having a hugely successful time at college!!

I would love to include her in the book I'm working on!  It's from the perspective of teens who were homeschooled/unschooled during their high school years. I have a survey at the website:

Homeschooled Voices: Listening to the Teens
http://sitekreator.com/teenbook/

The point is to hear directly from the teens/young adults themselves - in a format that I think will reassure parents who are uncertain about whether it's a good idea to homeschool their teenager. I would love to have Rain participate! Maybe before she leaves to go back to school you could ask her to look at the survey?

Have a great winter break with her, Sarah!!! I know you're happy to have her home!