Friends of Dave #340: the 🐂 💩 blind spot
We're all just a work in progress.
Watching your children transition to adulthood is an interesting experience.
As a parent, you spend almost two decades painstakingly raising them as their primary caregiver, rule maker and world definer and then, when they begin to leave the nest, that role abruptly changes.
One day (and, by the way, for each child this day comes at a different time), they don’t want or need you to do this for them any more. And when that happens, you have to be able to pivot.
While that feeling of responsibility for them never goes away, you realize that just about every aspect of your relationship needs to evolve.
They first begin to tell (and then show) you that their boots were made for walking. And you as you process this information? Regrets? You’ll have a few. But then again, hopefully they will be too few to mention.
Suddenly your tone when you speak to them needs to change. Your approach to them as their own person needs to change. You begin to understand that your overall role in their lives needs to change.
I say all of this because this week I felt like I received some signs that I was going to be okay at this parenting of adults thing.
Hard to believe it, but we now have three kids over the age of 18 in our family. Each one is currently in a different stage of figuring out how their proverbial boots will be doing their walking.
Perhaps the biggest development in how modern parents manage this transition today is the presence of texting in our lives. In generations past, children had to write or call to interact with their parents and seek counsel. Unless it was an emergency, it wasn’t usually done in real time.
Not today. Now you are accessible to them 24/7/365 — basically like a f*cking parental help desk. Whenever and where ever the kid wants your assistance, they can blow your sh*t up until they get it and you know they will DEFINITELY leave reviews of their level of service received.
So you can imagine there are a multitude of text threads and group chats being juggled in our family (often simultaneously). All with their own sets of words, tones, emoji choices and GIF reactions.
Right now, our oldest is our probably our toughest customer. She seems to be providing us both with the most urgent inbound requests for assistance AND unsolicited commentary on how we are assisting the others….So fun….
This week I received one notable midday diatribe that somehow included complaints about her co-workers, the current geo-political environment, RuPaul, those “rich Titanic sub idiots” and her “dumbass” siblings.
How does one react to all of this? Not to mention begin to understand how she tied it all together….like we’re talking M. Night Shyamalan level skill here. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if she also dropped in that she saw dead people (which is entirely possible).
Instead she ended it with open musings on how people don’t know how to manage their emotions and anxieties in certain situations.
The way it was phrased, it was hard to tell if this was a question, a statement, a cry for help or a Jedi mind trick that would lead to some other twist involving Mel Gibson, aliens and half drank glasses of water….
My next move was going to be critical. That’s when I paused, flexed my fingers and cracked my neck, channeled my inner MacGyver and slowly typed:
“Well, I guess we’re all just a work in progress. It never ends.”
It was short, to the point, somewhat ambiguously profound. Definitely parental but not too preachy or de-validating. Fairly sure no one could accuse me of “gaslighting.” Sort of the perfect midday fortune cookie.
And then I waited….no blinking dots…no response. END OF THREAD. Back to my regularly scheduled program….
Friends, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. 🙌🙌🙌
XOXO
Dave
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