Sometime last year I had a brief conversation with my brother-in-law, we talked about
what our children were doing as their twin boys and my son were in their last year of school. My brother in-law revealed that my sister was struggling with the transitioning of the last of their children to young adult hood and having to come to terms with that. He surprised me when he admitted although we often complain about the ‘angst’ that comes with teenage territory he also shared her sadness and dare I say grief.
This lead me to question my surprise, because it is not often we hear father’s express their thoughts and feelings about the so call ’empty nest syndrome’ which can sometimes appear to be a mother’s prerogative. The transitioning from parenting small children who rely on you solely for their survival, identity and sense of well being, I believe is a shared loss experienced by both parents albeit differently. Coupled with that sense of ‘loss’ is the complex balance of forging new relationships with your teenage children, which can comprise of accepting them as young adults and still asserting and re-definiting your identity as their parents. In households headed by single parents and same sex families it would be interesting to shed some insight into how this ‘loss’ and complex transition is experienced and whether there are any learnings from this?
When my last child transitioned into senior school yr 7. I felt a sense of loss that crept up on me that I wasn’t prepared for, I also felt I needed some sort of ceremony (which in some cultures is common ) to farewell the chatty little boy, that was always hanging around my feet with a twinkle in his eye waiting to be cuddled, tickled or chased. I am also hoping his father would post his own thoughts and insights from a male perspective – so watch this space!