Parenting - is it time for something new?

Have you noticed how many cafés and restaurants serve high tea these days? When I get together with a couple of friends, that’s usually what we have. I used to really enjoy it, but nowadays I just don’t. I’ve changed a bit.

So I’ve said to my friends: “I really love you and I want to spend time with you, but count me out of the high tea thing. From now on I’m choosing what I want to eat – I’ll just have a starter.”

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself: “At this stage of my life, who am I? What do I like? Have I changed?”

Another friend of mine was feeling a bit lost. She didn’t know what to do with herself, but kept going back to the same old things she’d always done. I suggested that she try something different, to see what suits her now. 

Different seasons and fits

Life’s a bit like a wardrobe: one dress won’t suit you for life. If you’re trying to fit into an old dress, put it back in the wardrobe. Try on some different dresses: try pottery, go white water rafting, help at a homeless centre. Do something that will lift you out of your old routines, and help you see yourself as you are now.

Sometimes a dress still fits, but it’s the wrong season for it. You don’t want a cosy knit in the middle of summer! Our lives have seasons, too. Years ago, when my kids were little, I loved having huge parties – mums in the kitchen drinking tea and coffee, kids in the garden painting cardboard shields. There would often be 50 people in the house when my husband got home from work!

To be honest, I still like a party – but nowadays I don’t enjoy it the way I used to. I’d rather have four couples around for a quiet dinner, or go out with three friends. I’ve realised that I appreciate a new, different pace. 

Do something that will lift you out of your old routines, and help you see yourself as you are now

I remember a talk by Bob Goff, the Christian speaker and writer. He said that when he met people who had known him from way back, they’d say: “Bob Goff? Oh, you’re into helping homeless people.” They weren’t wrong – once that had been his main focus. But, he said: “At 40 Bob Goff was into… and at 50 Bob Goff was into… And now I’m into…” Nowadays he is working mainly on nurturing Christian leaders. He is in a different season of his life.

Our kids are seasonal too

It’s similar with parenting. You have to keep adapting to different situations. Some kids enjoy robust play; others like quiet reading. Some kids hate to be teased; others can take it in their stride. What suits one child doesn’t necessarily suit another, even if they’re siblings.

In fact, the same treatment doesn’t even fit the same kid at different times – sometimes they’re going through a stage that they’re finding difficult, and they may be more irritable than usual. Parents have to be alert to their needs – and yes, we will all get it wrong sometimes.

One of the trickiest things is learning not to make assumptions about our kids. We think we know them. After all, who could know them better

than us, the ones who have watched them grow and develop? But it’s easy to put labels on them too soon. 

We want them to go on growing and changing, becoming closer to the person God wants them to be. We want them to be always asking: “Does God have something in store for me?” Not “I can’t do that; I’m not clever/sociable/adventurous enough.” 

Recently one of my daughters rang me and said she was going to buy a kitten. I dismissed the idea straight away. 

“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’ll need food and water and attention every day. Don’t you remember that rabbit we bought when you were ten? I ended up doing all the mucking out every week. You couldn’t remember to look after it.” 

She had a swift reply. “Mum, I’m 23. Don’t try to keep me in the box you had for me then. I’m old enough now to know what it takes to look after a pet.” It made me giggle because she was right. I was referring to a time when she was only little, and yet I was being totally unfair putting that framework around her now.

Adapting as a parent

I could have spent time asking her why she wanted a kitten, what she would do if she went on holiday and how the kitten would fit into her life. But now she’s an adult and has left home, it’s not my job to tell her what to do anymore. She’s in a different season of her life and so am I. I need a new dress, that fits the new me: ‘Mum of adult children’. It’s a whole new lifestyle, and I need to explore it.

I still need to be supportive, to have open doors and open arms when things go wrong for my children. But I can’t tell them what to do. I have to phrase advice very sensitively, and have to think before I speak. My kids are no longer a full-time job. I have a bit more time to explore what I need and what I want, and what God wants me to do. 

The Bible says: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,11). 

What season of life are you in? And what’s in your wardrobe? Do you need to try something new?