I’d suggest you ease up and try to encourage your son to have a girlfriend. Try to get to know the girl yourself.

Your son will probably lie to you if you make telling the truth harder for him than it ought to be.

While I honor your role as a single mother and respect the powerful relationship that you have built with your son, I will remind you that his natural desire to grow and create relationships of his own will ultimately over-power even his dedication and commitment to you.

And when he does this, it will not make you less of a mother but it will reveal that you have indeed been a very good one.

It is not only some exotic insects and creatures that eat their young. I’ve seen parents do it quite regularly. It happened to my friend when we were boys. His mother ate him. She tried to eat me too but I got away. I ran as fast as I could and after I did that once she left me alone. After I ran away that first time I could visit without her making a meal out of me. She knew I knew what she was up to and furthermore, I knew she knew I knew. Before all this “knewing” gets ridiculous I know that because of what we both knew I knew, she didn’t like me much which was okay with me. If you don’t like someone very much you are unlikely to eat him. Knowing made me safe – which I think it usually does.

Mrs. RunAwayBunny (I call her that just for fun) didn’t eat her son all in one bite, it was just slow, steady mouthfuls. Every time he expressed a view that wasn’t also her view, he got tongue lashed. She chewed him out when he showed any desire for independence or if he laughed at anything she didn’t find funny. Then one day it finally happened, she swallowed him altogether. His pinkie toe of his left foot was my very last glimpse of the real him. All this adoration and love wasn’t very pretty.

Of course she “loved him to death” and because he was “so adorable” she could just “eat him up.” So she did. She did spit him out after a few days much like I imagined the whale regurgitated Jonah. Unlike Jonah, my friend stopped thinking, seeing, feeling, and speaking for himself. Something happened when he got swallowed up, I guessed it was getting so near to the womb he’d already left, that stopped him up or it was something to do with getting too much mother juice. She loved him into what she wanted, into seeing things through her eyes, and when he did, she thought these triumphs were remarkable signs of just how much he loved her. She measured his love by how much of him she could occupy even though it was “Mrs. RunAwayBunny” (I’m liking her name more and more and you’ll know why if you’ve read the story) who wanted to occupy him. If this confuses you now you must know how much it confused me then.

We still rode our bikes together and we sometimes still walked through the forest at the bottom of the yard but after she ate him and coughed him up like a cat and a hairball it was like riding my bike with her and walking through the forest with someone who was always careful and afraid. After she loved him to death he wouldn’t cross Blackburn Road when there was no traffic without being terrified.

Yes. One day, as I told you, and because she loved him so completely and she was always willing to sacrifice her needs for him, she ate the boy out of him altogether. I know. I was there. I watched it happen.

Relax. Tell your children about your anxiety. Offer them some suggestions about how to address their insensitive friends when they parade their array of expensive clothes and latest gadgets. Your honesty will be a gift they will really remember.

Living between two biological parents (in the instance of a divorce) can be more difficult than living in two homes. Having two bedrooms in two different places can be unseating, while trying to accommodate competing loyalties can rip a child’s insides apart. Having a stranger move in (even if the step-parent is well known to the child) with mother or father can be very confusing for a child. Sometimes the only options seemingly available to the child are to shut down, reject, or rebel.

Re-marriage with children (made even more complex when there are children merging from both parties) requires great skill and forethought – and this is just when it comes to the children. When there are aggrieved former spouses, all with love for their respective children, all holding opinions on how children ought to be reared, the complexities for all are only further multiplied.

“I realize now that it is not my responsibility to keep their bond strong.  My son’s father is a grown man and he is aware of what he is doing.” (Edited)

Your ex-husband, his new wife and child, and your son, will be diminished while your ex neglects his firstborn son. Let’s hope the man grows up, shows up, and becomes the man I am sure he wants his son to be.

2. Your success is up to you.

3. Honesty is more powerful than money but it is nice if you have both.

4. Chase no one for anything.

5. Apologize quickly when you know you are wrong.
6. Try to make a new friend each week.

7. Rock the boat, break the rules, embrace adventure, but hurt no one in the process.

8. Surrender the desire to control others – monitor yourself, not others.

9. The love you have for yourself will be the benchmark for the love you have for others.

10. I love you even though there are times you might feel as if I don’t.

2. This is a long-term relationship. Don’t place it in jeopardy because of a lost pencil or a missing blazer. Step back when you are feeling intense feelings over any issue regarding your child at school. Schools are hothouses for anxiety. There are days and times when the smallest of matters can feel volcanic. Of course this goes both ways: teachers can be as eruptive as parents. Give each other a lot of room and a lot of grace.

3. Allow your child’s teacher to establish his or her own understanding of your child, his or her own perceptions of your child’s weaknesses, strengths, capacities for genius, hidden signs of prodigy and so forth. There is no need to bombard the teacher with everything you ever heard, thought, saw, desired, and wished for your child. It’s NOT about content (detail) it’s about the process of learning who and what we all are, with, and for, and to, each other. Give the teacher space to learn who you are and who your child is without you filtering everything. It’s ok!

4. Get a life (yes, I know that’s rude to say) OUTSIDE of your child. This will prevent you being a “helicopter parent.” The helicopter parent (hovering, monitoring) is only one symptom of over-focused or child focused parents. I have identified the bulldozer parent (the bully), the FBI parent (“Now let’s trace those missing 2 points on the test 7 weeks ago go, Ms. XYZ?” and “What EXACTLY, word for word now, did you say to my son about global warming?”), the “Chicken Soup” parent (constantly searching for warm and fuzzy), the “I-really-should-be-in-therapy parent,” (wants to tell the teacher every detail about her life and marriage), and the “Egg-shell” parent (“What EXACTLY did you mean by saying you thought my daughter was a good child?”), and the “Choose Me, Choose Me “ parent (constantly in search of affirmation). There are more, of course, but this is enough for now.

5. Don’t gossip with, or about, the teacher. Trying to get the inside scoop on the school or the board or the rector is unfair, unprofessional, and unacceptable. While giving you the illusion of being “close” and in the inner circle, such gossip is a complete disservice to your child, school, and to yourself. It’s a dangerous. It can cost jobs. Stop.

6. If you are unhappy about anything in the school or in the classroom, go to the teacher first. If you are not heard (this doesn’t mean he or she agrees with you) then go to the next level of authority. Don’t go directly to the head of school or to the board without first going to the source. The teachers do not enjoy being taken by surprise any more than you do. It’s a professional relationship – treat it as such.

7. Speak well of your teacher and the school. It might amaze you to know how your attitudes (positive and negative) leak into the teacher/student relationship. Your attitudes will inspire or infect others – especially your child.

8. If you are happy with something that occurs in the classroom shout it from the rooftops. Specifically tell the right people. Then, having done that, tell the world. Everyone wins when people are happy and when people freely and accurately affirm others.

9 Don’t speak for your child or interpret yours child’s world to the teacher. Let them develop their own dialogue. If you constantly run interference for your child he or she will rely on you to do so and, sadly, he or she will question his or her interpretation of what’s going. Allow your child to use the voice he or she already has apart from you. Of course there are exceptions to this suggestion – we both know that.

10. Remember, it is school. It is not the United Nations or the World Court. Try to keep an accurate perspective. Keep things down to size. Relax. Your child is more resilient than you might realize. While it certainly takes a village (as the tired cliché says) to rear a child (chickens, not children, are “raised”) enough parental anxiety will certainly screw one up no matter what any teacher does. Relax.

I’d suggest your wife be encouraged to have a conversation with a professional regarding what can be a very fulfilling relationship with her son. Many a parent can attach all manner of expectations onto a first-born child and find severe dissonance when the child appears unwilling or unable to meet those undisclosed expectations. A good helper will assist your wife to uncover what expectations she has that are not being fulfilled and help her to modify those expectations accordingly.

“You wrote that successful mothering does end. I feel that I am doing a great job with my 15 year old son. I adore my son, however, I am beginning to ‘let go.’ I am excited about his future and the role that I play in his becoming an independent young man who will leave us to spread his wings. However, I also have a younger son with severe autism. I also feel that I am doing a great job with him but this young man will not be spreading his wings. I am worried about his future and I am not sure that my mothering will end. We don’t have the facilities in South Africa to accommodate my son I really don’t think it is going to be possible to work myself out of this job. Do you have any advice for me?”

Call me. I'd love to help.

Your letter moved me deeply.

It shows once again that there are always exceptions to general measures of emotional and family wellness.

Your letter also reveals the diversity and the beauty seen in families.

As your younger son grows up, and as you develop the support and community you need for your own support, you will all train each other and strengthen each other for the difficult and beautiful road ahead.

These sentiments deserve challenge.

There is no question that once you are someone’s mother that that is a fact – but mothering does end.

Call me. I'd love to help.

I’d suggest the healthier the mother, the earlier in her child’s life, perhaps beginning around 16 and culminating at around 22, she plans to have worked herself out of a job.

It’s replaced, and the transition is of course gradual, with becoming a respectful friend of one whom she has successfully mothered.

I know this is an unpopular thought. I know so many women are defined by their role as mother. I know I am challenging something primal.

But, successful mothering ends.

Healthy adult men and women want mothers to be friends, first. They don’t want an adult who needs to be a mother in order to exist.

If the sighs cease and the lamenting ends perhaps adult sons and daughters will find staying in touch a whole lot more rewarding and meaningful.