Growing Pains...

Growing pains.... DEEP sigh here.  I suppose it’s a good thing that they continue.  Feeling them means I’m still growing and learning, In my youth I  foolishly thought there would come a time when they would cease though.  Mother daughter relationships are often complicated. I like to blame the complication on a “double dose” of estrogen in the same house!  I am the mother of an almost 20 year old adult woman.  I sometimes have trouble remembering that. Not that I’m a mother but that she is now an adult.  It seems the past week or so has been another episode of growing pains in our relationship.

When things like responsibility and nurturing were being handed out I got in line twice. FOR BOTH of them!  I’m almost always responsible, excessively and boringly so. And I mother everyone and everything that comes my way. And as a mother I’m used to doing both with my children.  I KNOW what is best for them, even if I don’t know or do what is best for me.  I can see just what they should do, HOW they should do and when they should do it. I’ve been a single parent since my daughter was 7 years old and I  went into overdrive when that happened trying to be ALL she needed, overcompensating for what she no longer had.  I think I did a fine job of  providing for her, of encouraging her to grow and mature and develop the coping skills she would need as an adult. And she is doing just fine.  So what is the problem?

I sometimes find myself trying to mother her as though she were still 7 and a frightened little girl whose world was totally torn asunder.  She is a remarkable young woman. She is bright, compassionate, highly motivated to succeed and quite responsible in her own right.  She is all I could ask for in a daughter.  She normally handles my overprotectiveness calmly and rationally ( if at times slightly condescendingly, which is normal for a 20 year with her mother:-)  

This week I totally overreacted to something she did. Twice. The first instance she did something I asked. Without a single complaint and because she knew I was working and did not have time. She did it the way she had been taught. And I became upset because this time I would have done it differently. And I expected her to KNOW what I wanted without communicating it to her.  The fault was solely mine. I blamed her for something that was MY fault.  She looked at me first as though I was absolutely nuts and then she listened to my tirade without response. But I could see by  the look on her face that my words hurt her. That in turn hurt me. I sincerely apologized and then I cried.

My second offense was making a derogatory comment to her about the way she was dressed.  I opened my mouth and the words came out, in a way that I was mortified to hear. She is a beautiful woman, who always dresses well.  She is surprisingly modest in a time when showing it all is the norm.  She is the exception. This time she went into her room and closed me out.  

Parenting is never easy but learning to be a friend and gaining a friend in return is my goal at this point.  I have done my job as her parent and done it very well. I will always be her mother and she my daughter but she is an adult. She is good woman. I need to remember that!