Podcast #161 – Mothering Sons Into Adulthood

The relationship between a mother and her son is special, but it also changes as he moves from being a little boy, to being a teenager, to being a man.  As moms we need to learn to accept these changes and grow and change with them. 

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Resources mentioned:

• Boys and Their Attitudes (Podcast #54)
• How to Parent and Discipline Boys and their Attitudes (post)
• Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy

Transcript:

This podcast addresses what it has been like mothering sons into adulthood.

I am in a new season of life where I have adult children, both boys and girls, and I thought it would be a good idea for this podcast to address what it has been like mothering sons into adulthood.

I don’t feel like I can quite yet speak on mothering daughters into adulthood, but I do have a couple of sons who have gotten married and have moved out on their own, and they have their own lives, and it is a totally different relationship. And I just want to share with you some of my thoughts and some of the things that have been sorrowful to me, some of the things that have been joyful to me, and some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Raising Arrows podcast. I’m Amy Roberts from RaisingArrows.net. And this is episode number 161, Mothering Sons into Adulthood.

Now, the reason I decided I wanted to do this podcast is because I have been reading Kristin Lavransdatter, which is a Norwegian novel written in the 1920s, set in medieval Norway. And Kristin, in this book, has seven sons. And I have been able to so identify with some of the things that she feels, some of the things that she says, some of the things that happen in the story. These characters are very raw. This is not a feel good novel. It has been such a gut-wrenching read at times. And so I thought, you know, I want to share my experience as well with raising sons – and like I said at the top of the podcast, some of the sorrowful things, some of the joyful things, and some of the lessons that I have learned through this process.

First of all, I want to share with you a quote from Kristin Lavransdatter. This is from the third book, The Cross. In chapter one of part three, it says,

Kristin felt as if she were now an old woman. It seemed to her that a woman was young as long as she had little children sleeping in her arms at night, playing around her during the day, and demanding her care at all times. When a mother’s children have grown away from her, then she becomes an old woman.

I have cried more than once while reading this book. It is again, so raw, so painful in some places. As this story unfolds, Kristin’s life is far from perfect, and pretty much everything happens because of consequences from when she was younger. And it is just like I said, just a very raw story.

But reading those words, I sat there and cried because there is a part of me that feels like I have suddenly aged tremendously because my youngest child is seven. As I move into this season of having children who don’t need me anymore, not in a very physical sense, where they are constantly demanding my attention, I am starting to see my role differently and it has not been an easy transition. I will just be totally honest with you – there has been a bit of a grieving process that has come with this.

And another reason I wanted to address this is because I’m not the only one who has felt this. I actually have had readers and listeners who have messaged me and said, “Hey, I’m in this new season and I don’t know what to do. I hate this transition. I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.” And I agree. There are so many new things about this season. You know, I spent two decades in the last season and now here I am in this new season and I really don’t know what to do with it. And so I wanted to share just a few things with you.

Raising boys is different.

First of all, boys are different. There is just no doubt about it. And you will never fully understand them. As a mother, you may think that you understand them and you may be very close to them. I am very close to my sons. They are wonderful human beings, but I do not fully understand them. And a lot of that is because, number one, I’m coming from a female perspective, and number two, I’m coming from a motherly perspective. And so when they venture out and do things, when they try new things, when they are taking dominion and ruling the world and doing all these things that men tend to do, I am not going to fully understand. And when they take risks that I do not understand, I have to kind of temper myself and realize these are adult men. I am no longer the main influence in their lives and nor should I be. Yes, mothers rule the world by rocking the cradle, but we do not have a lot of say once they become adults.

We really shouldn’t have a lot of say by that point. We should have mothered them into adulthood and they should be able and capable to take care of themselves and also take care of a family when that time comes. As my boys have grown up, and not all my boys are grown, by the way. I have an 11 year old, a 13 year old and a 15 year old still at home, but I have an 18 year old and a 26 year old boy who are out on their own with families of their own. And as I look back on their childhood, and as I am currently mothering young men into adulthood as well, what I am trying to do is slowly let go of them. And I’m doing that with all the children. But I feel like the boys are even more important because they are going to be the heads of their households someday, and they do not need their mother tagging along, you know, whispering in their ear.

I don’t think it’s very healthy for mothers to be too involved in their son’s lives as they are adults, especially once they have their own families. I think that it’s great to have a friendship relationship, a mother to son relationship, but not one where I am still actively mothering them by telling them what to do or by sharing my opinions about things in their world. I need to just let them be adults.

It’s very much like when you become a grandmother, you do not want to mother your grandchild. That is not a good idea. You need to be a grandmother to that child. You need to be that person who snuggles and loves on them and nurtures them, but is not trying to be their mom or their dad. You don’t need to be, you know, constantly hands on parenting that child. That’s their mom and dad’s job. And I don’t want to overstep my bounds, and I also do not want to overstep my bounds with my adult sons.

As my boys get older, I need to be in the process of letting go and letting them become adults. And that’s with all your children. There is a letting go process that happens with all your children. I just think it’s more pronounced with the boys. Probably because they are men. They are different, and you have to recognize that and allow that.

Privileges and Responsibilities

Part of this letting go, too, is giving them more responsibilities and then giving them the privileges that go along with those responsibilities. I think you find quite often, and I have written about this and done a podcast on this, about boys and their attitudes. I think what you find a lot of times is if mom is hanging on white knuckled to her sons, they will start to push back at some point. And that pushback starts long before you are actually ready for it, if you’re ever actually ready for it. I think my oldest son was about 13. I think my younger son was pretty close to that age. I see it now in my 15 year old, and it probably started a couple of years ago. So 13 seems to kind of be about the age where there’s a little bit more of pushback with mom. There’s a little bit more of trying to tell his sisters what to do, trying to tell his mom what to do do. And so what I have found is that the mothers who are hanging on to their little boys and not giving them any more responsibility, not expecting more manly things of them, they are the ones who end up with the most pushback when you really could head some of that off by giving your sons more responsibility.

And what this looks like is giving them jobs that you don’t hover over them while they do. Letting them make decisions that you don’t constantly correct. Letting them venture out on their own and be adventurous and find their passions and do things without you constantly nagging or constantly telling them how they could do it better. Let them try, give them the tools and let them be courageous and try to do things.

And don’t let this be where you’re nitpicking every little thing. Like, generally, overall they did a good job with this particular thing that they were given as a responsibility, then reward them with privileges.

As they get older, their lives need to change. They need to be more and more in charge of themselves. They need to have more and more self government, self awareness, and the only way they are going to get that is if you allow them to have it.

So again, give them responsibilities. Keep giving them responsibilities, keep adding more, and then reward them with the privileges that naturally come from being a responsible adult. This may be letting them stay up later. This may be letting them go someplace by themselves. This may be allowing them to have more leniency on what they choose to read or watch. There’s all kinds of ways that you can give them more privileges and still have a pulse on what’s going on.

Keep that conversation going with them, but don’t condemn them all the time or nag them all time, or be on to them all the time. And also realize that as they get older, they are going to become more and more autonomous. And that’s what you want. You do not want to be in charge of them for the rest of their lives. You want there to come a point where you cut those apron strings. They are still tied to your heart. Boys and their mamas have a special relationship. They will still be tied to your heart. They just don’t need to be tied to your hip. And so realize that there is a point where you need to start letting go. And this starts pretty early. And just slowly, but surely let them have more responsibilities and privileges until you have launched them out of your household.

Launching your sons.

With that said, launching them out and letting them go and that whole process is painful. I am going to be totally honest with you here. It is painful. There came a point where our son, who is now 26, I believe he was 20 or 21 at the time that we moved away, and he chose to stay behind in the city that we had been in because he had two years left of school, and he just wanted to finish out school where he was living. He didn’t want to move with us, so he stayed there at that particular college, and we moved 4 hours away from him.

I felt as if I left a piece of my heart back there with him. I didn’t want to leave him there. Even though I knew it was the right thing, even though I knew that I had prepared him and I had launched him and he was going to do fine, it was still difficult for me to just walk away.

And then in that process, what happened was now he is fully an adult. He does not live under my roof anymore, and he never did live under my roof again. The house that we currently live in is the same house we moved to when we left him down there. And, he has never physically lived in this house. This is not his home. And that has been hard as well, to realize that he has no childhood memories in the home that we currently live in. And he does not come home all that often.

And now he’s married, and there’s another family that he has to balance his time with. In fact, they live near her family, not near us. And so we don’t do as many things with them as they do with her parents. And there is a little bit of jealousy in me. There’s a little bit of me that’s sad about that and wishes that I could spend more time with him and his wife. He’s married to a wonderful woman. I would love to spend more time with them, but we don’t live right there. We are three and a half hours away from him now, and so it’s just a different world. And there is a piece of my mama’s heart that just aches for that.

But there is also a soothing balm to my mama’s heart when he calls and we spend 2 hours on the phone solving the world’s problems and then realizing we can’t solve the world’s problems and then saying goodbye till the next time. Or like yesterday, I went down to visit him. I spent the night with them. He and I talked and talked and talked. We had a wonderful time. I got to see all his new techie gadgets and all of that stuff. He was showing off his toys to me, like when he was younger, and it was a great time. I had so much fun just spending that one on one time with him and his wife.

And so there is a difference to what it was like when he lived in our household. There is a difference to our relationship as well. We, can banter back and forth, argue about things, not have the same ideas about politics or passages of Scripture or what have you. We can talk about those things. We can even get in a heated discussion about those things sometimes. But we still love each other at the end of the day. And I have realized that he is his own person, and the things that he believes have developed over time into his own brand of whomever he is now. You know, this adulthood brand that he has become. And I am happy and proud and surprised by some things.

And so I have had to really let go of any expectations that I have and recognize that he is not my little boy anymore. He is my grown up arrow that has left my quiver. And we now function on a very different mother son relationship than we did when he was in my household. I cannot tell him what to do. I cannot have very strong opinions about his lifestyle in any way, shape, or form. That is not what my role is anymore. And honestly, he’s a great guy. It’s not like he’s doing something that I am totally against. But even if he were, I would really have to assess our relationship as adults. We are now both adults, and our relationship cannot function any longer as mother and little boy.

There comes a point in your son’s life when they have to establish themselves.

And that brings me to my next point. There will come a point in your son’s life when they have to establish themselves as a separate entity from you. Again, like I said, you have to cut those apron strings. You have to not be tied at the hip anymore. They’re still tied to your heart. They are still your son. But they have to establish themselves as their own separate entity.

And so I’ve seen this with both my boys who have struck out on their own – that they are trying to figure out who they are as men, who they are as husbands, who they are as fathers. And they cannot depend on me to define that for them. Nor do I want to be the definition of that for them.

They are certainly going to draw on their childhoods. They are going to look back at their own father, the way that both of us parented, the way that the home worked. They’re going to look at those things, and they’re going to make decisions based on what they’ve learned, how they’ve lived. And also bringing to this equation are their wives. And so there’s a whole other dynamic there, and I have to step back and let them be the heads of their households. They are not my dependents any longer. They are not my children any longer. They are my grown adult sons. I must treat them that way, and I must treat them with respect based on the fact that they are now adults. They are now their own household.

Never overstep or undermine.

Let me reiterate here with my final point, something that I said earlier. You do not want to overstep or undermine in your son’s marriage. In particular, as mom, your role changes. You must accept that. You must lean into that and celebrate the new role that you have as their mother and not as the mother who is changing diapers and nursing babies and all of that, but as the mother who is there when they need you, the mother whom they now come back and honor, the mother who is somebody they can talk to, somebody they can have a friendly conversation with, somebody they can rely on to meet their wife with love and respect and not try to undermine their marriage, not try to undermine their parenting, not try to tell them how to do things, not be looking down her noses at how they’re doing things as a couple, not trying to pit them against each other, not pushing her way into the relationship in any way, shape, or form. You do not want to be that mother or that mother in law. It is not fair, it is not right, and it is not your job.

So while I do not feel as if I am an old woman, the way that Kristin Lavransdatter felt when her boys were no longer at her feet playing and no longer needed her as much, I do not see myself as an old woman. I do see myself as an older woman, and I do see myself in a totally different role now. I do still have young children. My youngest, like I said, is 7 and I do still have things I have to do for her. I’m still teaching five kids. So, I do still have that life, and maybe that’s why I don’t feel like I’m an old woman yet.

But I do understand the heart behind that sentiment. My life has changed. This season has definitely changed for me, and I have kind of stumbled into it and stumbled around it. And I can’t say that I’m doing it very well, but I am learning, just as I had to stumble around in the dark learning how to be a mom, and then a mom of many, I am now kind of stumbling around trying to figure out how to be the mother of these grown adult children. And what does that look like, and how far do I go with my advice and my conversations with them?

I have to work a lot harder to temper what I say to them because I’m not their number one guide anymore. They now look to the Lord to guide them completely and totally. I am a voice from the past, and I am someone who is there for them no matter what. But I am not the one speaking everything into their lives anymore. And so while that can bring me great sorrow and I can feel pain and nostalgia.

Oh, the nostalgia.

I tell you what, there are days when I just want to go back and do it all over again. Not because I would change a thing, but because I just want to do it all over again. But I can’t.

And so I do have to celebrate and enjoy, and absolutely, I do. I am so joyful with where we are in our lives with these children and with these adult children. It is a joyful thing for me. It’s an encouraging thing for me. And there is heartache and there is pain, but there are so many blessings with it as well. And that is something that I have just had to learn as I go.

So if you are in this season with me, or you can see this season coming up, because we do start to get foretastes of it as our children grow older. Just realize that there are blessings in this time. There are going to be things that are painful, but there are going to be blessings as well.

And this is a God ordained part of our journey. You were never meant to be the mother of small children for your entire life. You were never meant to hold all those arrows in your quiver forever. This is just one more part of that parenting journey for you to work through, to enjoy, to learn lessons from.

And trust me when I say you will find blessings in this season as well.

Thank you so much for joining me on the Raising Arrows® podcast – your home for all things large family homemaking and homeschooling. Until next time, may you find joy and blessings in the journey.