When does a parent stop worrying about the kids?

A few weeks ago, I returned from a trip in Sri Lanka. While there, I tried hard to keep all thoughts of home and hearth, kids and kitchen behind me. But try as I did, such thoughts sneaked in surreptitiously, like visitors who will never leave my consciousness. This is not to say that I did not enjoy my visit. I did. But, there was always the thought of ‘Oh, they would have liked this too! What are they doing back home?’

In our small group were two other women, also mothers. The younger one has a son who is little over a year old. She had left him for the first time to travel. The other, Parinita Gawri, who was more or less my age, has two kids like I do (a daughter and a son) and they are also around the same age as mine. We bonded well not just because we have kids in a similar phase of growth but because we discovered a host of common interests. Though I had not spent so much time with this lovely lady earlier in Mumbai, I knew she was a vivacious person — and discovered that she has an endless source of energy that keeps her going for longer than any of us.

While interacting, I raised a question that we tried to find an answer to: When does a parent stop worrying about grown-up kids? I can see my two children who are five years apart entering new phases of life — trying to find their own formulae to blueprint their route ahead. Whether it is the choice of a job or the selection of a college, the all-important question is debated, but the casting vote is that of the individual who has to live with it later. Or so I believe!

When I look at Aakanksha and Gaurav now, I sometimes get the impression that they are ‘playing grown up’. And that if I blink my eyes, we will return to a time when they were both kids whose centre of the world was first family and then the rest of it. To tell the truth, each landmark they reached meant they have taken a step away from the days they depended on me for their every little need or decision. And each moment they grow older and more independent, brings me immeasurable pride tinged with a little heartbreak.

So, what should I, as a mother, do when my kids are at this stage of their lives? Obviously, I can no longer be the helicopter mom I enjoyed being. That role is behind me. But there are some things I know I can still do.

One of them is to listen. I know that there will be many occasions when my young adults will want to speak or vent about the anger, the confusion, the pain and hopefully, the joy of what is happening in the present, the past or is likely to happen in the future. I could honestly spend hours listening to their voices. But as I listen and as they speak, we often discover the beginning of a solution in the chat-a-thon itself. And that is fruitful time spent. If not, it has at least kept the windows open through which I can watch the goings-on in their world.

I no longer can fight their battles or take on their demons. But, I know it is time they faced their issues, formed their own war cries (for want of a better word) and revelled in their rewards. I’m sure they will emerge better individuals, whether they have experienced better or worse. And no matter what course their lives take, they will always see me standing in the wings, with a smile on my lips and tears in my eyes.

Shraddha Jahagirdar-Saxena
The writer, Executive Editor, Verve, is, in her personal space, often driven to distraction by her two growing ‘young adults’, but she loves the madness of it all.