The Trials of Parenting Adult
Kids by Alexandra Addams
Author Alexandra Addams on discovering the challenges of mid-life parenting can be trickier than the baby-years…
As a mother of five children, if I was ever to write a parenting book it wouldn’t be about the younger years. That stuff is covered by a very fluid and ever-changing river of books. Good luck with Gentle Parenting by the way. Seriously. I’m rooting for you!
No, my addition to the canon would be about the early adult years after those little gremlins grew up. The title would be “Guilt and Confusion – The Defensive Art of Parenting Young Adults”, and I’d write it in a choose-your-own-adventure style. For example:
After teaching your kids that “love is love” and “nothing will ever change that” for their ENTIRE* lives, how do you cope with being accused of homophobia by your pouty, poetry major, 21-year-old after she’s listened to one too many TikTok’ers talking about toxic parents? If you:
1. Recount loudly all the reasons why their healthy and normal opinions are due directly to your raising them in a liberal education environment which reflected your values as a human and a parent…
Turn to page 47 (where you can find a journal page to jot down just how much that preschool Montessori education cost you for posterity)
2. Burst into tears at the injustice of it all…
Turn to 118 (where you’ll find a comforting cocktail recipe)
3. Start shrieking that, “you have more gay friends than they do and wouldn’t those friends have picked up on any latent hatred you might have for them already?”
Turn to page 110. (Where you’ll find a rainbow flag to color in until you can breathe without gasping.)
4. Did all three of the above… then put this book down and go make a cup of tea, love.
On every second page of this handbag-size book, in a large, happy font, will be the words, “It’s not you. It’s them. You’re actually pretty great.”
After spending two decades of telling your kids to wash their hands and asking, “what do you say?” to make them hygienic and polite human beings, the (much taller than you) little sods have the bare-faced nerve to turn around and accuse you of being a filthy human with a toxic world view. The frustration and hurt this can cause in a mother is not to be underestimated.
I mean, c’mon, you survived the teen years. Shouldn’t they have been the worst of it? But no, the kid turns twenty, and all of a sudden they want you to fund their new therapist so they can explain to you over every Sunday Family Dinner that they actually endured a traumatic childhood due to your helicopter parenting or not forcing them to play more sport – their own “choose-your-own-adventure for what Mum did wrong.”
Unfortunately, after talking to dozens and dozens of mothers all over the world, here’s what I’ve discovered:
If you were a full-time working mother, determined to model just how much women can achieve in a man’s world, bringing home the bacon to keep your own little piggies healthy, you will be judged and found wanting by your young adults.
If you were a stay-at-home mum, handmaking those Book Week costumes and baking for each bake sale, joining every committee determined to make a positive difference in all areas of your kids’ lives, you will be judged and found wanting.
If you did it all – worked, baked muffins, paid the mortgage, built their science projects, took them into your place of employment to inspire a similar work ethic – then I’m so sorry to tell all you poor exhausted, cortisol-soaked mothers, you too will be judged and found wanting.
At the risk of sounding like one of my entitled Gen-Xers, it’s just not fair!
In my novel, The Self-Made Saint, I explore a very volatile relationship between a mother in mid-life and her adult daughter who has just had a baby herself. This sensitive time is fraught with difficulty as the daughter challenges her mother on all she did “wrong”, just moments before she herself is about to humbled by the craziness of parenthood. Even while asking myself the question, what would I do? My main character chooses to defend her parenting while still admitting it was flawed.
Throughout the narrative, I choose to expose the real effects of standing your ground with adult kids, when the ever present danger of them cutting you out of their lives hovers over so many interactions. It can be terrifying. Yet, where there is love, there is always hope for reconciliation. Right? I know I hope so.
This threat of estrangement is a very real source of shame for so many mothers I know parenting young adults. We don’t want to admit even to each other that after raising them up, our daughters now look down on us; that our sons doubt our intellect and challenge us on issues we often aren’t concerned with simply because we are MID-LIFE ADULTS! I don’t know about you, but I’m not over here reading any Reddit sub-forum shaming me into changing my geo-political world view. I’m working a job, running a household and still, freaking, parenting!
So when you do see my young adult parenting book in a bookstore, rest assured it will be a font of sympathy and the assurance that young adults do eventually turn into grown adults around age 24 to 26 years old. Bless ‘em because THAT is when you will see the incredible and loving people you really hoped you were creating for all those decades. Trust me! I’ve got two of mine already there, just got three more young adults to get through and I’m on easy street.
Right?
*I’ve been told it’s super cringe to use all caps but I’m old school and I like ‘em so please enjoy my prolific use.
The Self-Made Saint by Alexandra Addams (High Frequency Press, £15) is available from all good book retailers https://alexandraaddams.com/
The Self-Made Saint is a character driven, contemporary novel, perfect for book groups. Addams finds the consistently fraught interactions between parents and their children to be an endless source of inspiration for her writing. She is also compelled to write about the wonderful and often complex interactions between females.
Judith Drainger has always played life by her own rules. But these days life seems to be playing her right back.
Divorced, orphaned and forcibly retired, 59-year-old Judith is determined to seize the opportunity to leave her broken home in London and move across the world to Australia. Here she reunites with her estranged adult daughter Cassandra – only to land smack bang in the emotional quagmire of her daughter’s anger and abandonment issues. To make matters worse, Judith can see her new granddaughter Emily has a serious health issue, but her offers of help are ignored and rejected.
When an accident knocks her off her feet, Judith is swamped by the kindly care of her nosy new neighbours. Yet, when given a chance to become a part of their community, Judith shocks even herself by making a series of unforgivable blunders. Realizing if she’s to have any hope of reuniting her family, well-meaning but stubborn curmudgeon Judith must learn the power of saying ‘sorry’ – and what it actually means to be a good person.
Addams’ skillful and subtle storytelling weaves this contemporary comedic family drama around her convincing characters. Readers won’t be able to resist falling in love with Judith, despite her many relatable flaws.
Find out more: www.alexandraaddams.com
