by Annia Lindsay (Thu Mar 11, 2010)
Is there an upside to having an ‘empty nest'?
Well yes, if
the alternative means being one of those parents moaning about their
twenty-somethings (and God forbid their thirty-somethings) still living at
home. I know there's a recession on but that's ridiculous.
Having successfully ejected my offspring from the nest, I
now have an independent daughter who invites me round to dinner, treats me to
the theatre on my birthday, and who lends me her car when mine is off the road,
and we occasionally go on a weekend break together because she wants to.
Of course this ecstatic state of affairs wasn't established
until we had loaded my car and her car several times to move her mountain of
stuff from my flat to her new flat-share. And in the early days I had to keep
her bedroom available just in case the flatmates turned out to be a nightmare
to live with or the rent proved too much. And there is that occasional limbo in
between rentals when my place looks like a second-hand shop and I can't find
anything. And of course now each move consists of more journeys because she
keeps acquiring furniture, including a television she inherited from her last
flat-mate.
At first I thought the flat mate was being incredibly generous,
but soon realised he was merely incredibly devious because the television
appears to be made of concrete. Getting it out of her old flat into the car was
bad enough, but the journey with it up my stairs nearly made me put
independent-but-still-needing-mum-to-help daughter up for adoption. Where are
her friends when you want them? Getting the wretched TV back down the stairs a
month later was a little easier because we devised a brilliant method of
sliding it down on a piece of hardboard, along my path and across the pavement
to the car (still on the hardboard) only to discover we had slid it over
dog-poo. But that was a small price to pay...
Now I'm no longer forking out for university fees, I can
afford to go on fantastic holidays unencumbered by a car-sick child who only
wants to go to a beach, and whose idea of sophistication is coconut ice-cream;
or a moody teenager who would rather be dead than anywhere near her parents -
bad enough at home but the last thing you want trailing around a Place of Interest:
‘This is sooooo booooring!'
I can wear clothes of my choosing because I am no longer
scrutinized by a hyperventilating 14-year-old gasping:‘You can't
wear that, people might see,' as I get ready for parents'
evening.
I get to go to the local cinema with her, without her
dreading that she will see someone from school and be forever shunned as the
person who went to the cinema with her mother. Now she actually
introduces me if she sees a friend, rather than shuffling as far away as
possible before any genetic connection between us can be discerned.
My fridge stays fuller much longer as I no longer have
starving sixth-formers eating our entire week's food for a little snack in
between lessons - because my house ‘is the nearest and it's cheaper than the
canteen' - and the juice cartons in the fridge actually have juice in them.
I don't have to nag her about homework or do her
homework (and wonder why I only got a ‘D'). I don't have to drive to the
shopping centre at a minute's notice two days after Christmas, when it's
heaving with millions of manic bargain hunters, in order to find the perfect
piece of material for her textiles project which has to be started, never mind
completed, and handed in on the first day of term.
So forget the mollycoddling, teach your kids independence.
Forget ‘empty-nest' syndrome and banish all thoughts of being a hovering
helicopter parent - learn to fly yourself. Enjoy the time before grandchildren
need baby-sitting and you get to go through it all over again (even if you do
get to give them back). Enjoy this time before the residential home looms!
