Reading · Moms of Bigs with Esther Joy Goetz

“Our big kids are trying to become their own people. We just happen to be standing directly in the line of fire.” (Esther Joy Goetz)

When one of my sons was sixteen, he took an introductory psychology class in high school.

Around that same time, he began asking some pretty big questions about the faith tradition we had raised him in.

One day he said something like, “What if all those people who said they heard God’s voice telling them to do this or that were actually mentally ill? I mean, put them in a courtroom today and they would probably be hospitalized. Especially the people who said God told them to kill other people.”

Welp.

Nothing like a sixteen-year-old to get the “party started.” And not exactly the kind of conversation I had expected right before dinner on a Wednesday afternoon.

I wish I could say I responded with complete calm and curiosity. But inside, I felt rattled.

This was not simply an idea to me. It was our faith. It was what we had taught him. It was woven into our family and into the way I had understood the world for most of my life.

I mean, God talks to me, right?

This kid was endless with all his questions about all the things.

Why did he have to show his work on his math problems if he was smarter than the teacher? Why did he have to go on the family men’s fishing trip with his dad if he hated fishing? Why? Why? Why?

He asked all of it without batting his proverbial eye.

To be honest, it was exhausting and so many of these questions felt like rejection.

Maybe even rebellion.

But thank goodness for 20/20 backward vision, because I can see something now that I was kind of a wreck about then.

This kid was not necessarily fighting against me.

He was fighting to figure out where I stopped and he began.

He was fighting FOR himself.

Good for him.

But, to be honest, really hard for me.

There’s a super fancy word psychologists use for the work our big kids are doing: “individuation.”

Basically, we spend their whole childhood telling them what our family believes, what matters, how we treat people, and a million other things we probably don’t even realize we are teaching them. Then they hit these big kid years and start rummaging through all of it, usually out loud and not always very politely, trying to decide:

What if I don’t believe any of this?

Why do we have to keep doing things just because this family has always done them?

What if I don’t want to go to college, get a normal job, get married, or live the kind of life everyone seems to want for me?

Why does everyone get so weird when I disagree?

If I tell you what I really think, are you going to lecture me, freak out, or still want me around?

Bottom line: they are trying to figure out where we end and they begin.

And sometimes, to find that line, they push against us.

They reject our advice before they have even considered it. They roll their eyes at traditions they once loved. They choose different relationships, beliefs, or ways of living.

Sometimes they seem irritated simply because we have entered the room.

And because we love them so much, it is hard not to take it personally.

I mean, how could we not?

The only thing that helped me then, and still helps me now, is reminding myself that they are not actively trying to cut me off or stop loving me.

They are trying to learn how to be themselves while still loving me.

They may even be testing the waters to see if they still belong when they don’t share all the same viewpoints we do. (Think about the political landscape right now, my friends, and all the family estrangement happening because of it. UGH!)

There is one important caveat: This does not mean every harsh word or hurtful behavior gets a pass. Our kids can be finding themselves while respect remains the foundation of our relationship.

Respect from them and, if I’m honest and want to shout from the rooftops at all of us mom (especially the one writing this), RESPECT FROM US, too.

But it does mean that every difference does NOT have to become a threat.

We can gently remind our nervous systems, which have apparently mistaken a difference of opinion for a five-alarm fire, that we are okay.

We’re okay. We’re okay. We’re okay.

So here’s a question I ask myself all the time in my relationships with my kids:

What is mine to do here?

My son was doing the necessary developmental work of figuring out what he believed and who he was with all of his questions. All of our kids are.

But I have my own questions to ask.

Can I let my kids ask questions without rushing to defend everything I had ever taught them?

Can I stay curious when I feel afraid? Oh my, oh my, oh my.

Can I trust that questioning my beliefs does not mean they are rejecting me?

Can I love the people my kids are becoming, even if that does not remotely feel familiar to me?

This is the very hard work of these big kid years and probably why the pushback can feel so endless, whether it comes at us as silence, shouting, or one-word answers from the other side of a closed bedroom door or an unanswered text about where they are going to church.

They are learning to trust their own voices.
We are learning not to experience every difference as rejection.

They are discovering who they are apart from us.
We are discovering who we are when we are no longer calling the shots.

They are learning to carry their own lives.
We are learning how to love without taking those lives back.

Their work is to become more fully themselves.
Our work is to love them without requiring them to remain versions we are comfortable with.

So maybe this is the question of questions I need to keep asking myself the next time we’re “standing in the kitchen on a Wednesday afternoon”:

Can I let my big kid be them and me be me?

Some days, I can.

Other days, all those scared neurons stage a complete takeover and I start explaining, defending, and offering just “one more” thought.

Maybe you, too?

But over here in ordinary New Jersey, I’m holding on with all my mom might that their pushback does not always mean they are pushing me away.

But over here in ordinary New Jersey, I’m holding on with all my mom might to the truth that their pushback does not always mean they are pushing me away.

Sometimes it means they are doing the messy, necessary work of becoming themselves, often right in the middle of making dinner.

And sometimes my part is to take a breath, remember that different does not mean gone, and keep at least six of my seven extremely helpful thoughts inside my own head.

From my neurons-firing mama heart to yours,
Esther
Mom Coach and Author

💬 Mom-to-Mom Reflection:

What do you wish your kid would get done right now? What’s on your list? We’re allowed to say it all here. Or anything else you want to share, because I love comments!!

Why These Big Kid Years Are So Rough Sometimes

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