Looking back on the year 2019, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of my favorite advice from my counselor. I believe that this is something that any person with parents may relate to, but I think this will ring true in the ears of any young person coming into adulthood.
Now that I am 19 years old, living on my own in a brand-new city, paying taxes, building my credit score, doing all of the adult things, my parents are terrified. Rightly so, of course. It’s always hard for parents to let their little birds fly. And it doesn’t make it easier than I am at a point in my life where I need to call them five times a day to ask how to adult, but I also need them to give me space.
I’m doing all of the things that my mom didn’t want me to do including getting an apartment. Yes, I want my own apartment and I want my mom to pay for all of my furniture. And no, she can’t pick the furniture. And yes, I will get upset when she calls me for the tenth time to make really sure that I don’t want this couch off craigslist. And when she gets upset that I don’t want the couch, she will proceed to bring up the fact that I cut my hair and how stupid of an idea it was. Of course, that will just lead to me promptly pointing out that it’s my hair and I can do what I want. And this will lead to a petty argument not even concerning couches. And then I’ll pout and cry about the fact that my mother one isn’t being an adult and two isn’t treating me like one. This is the moment in my story where my counselor called me out.
“Well you’re an adult now too, are you acting like one?” I thought that seemed a little [unfair] because I just became an adult. Things aren’t going to just click. It’s like she read my mind because then she said “Things don’t click when you turn 18, or 38 or 58. You’re constantly learning and adapting. There are going to be some things that your mother is more mature in responding to and some instances where it will seem that you have passed your mother psychologically.
While this didn’t make all of our petty arguments disappear, it did help me understand my mother more. Through that understanding, I’m not reacting to her responses as someone who has everything all figured out. I’m reacting to her as an equal (whether or not she agrees with my position). We are both adults. She has more life experience than I do, but I have a very different life than the one she has had. We both have our own sets of knowledge where we are smarter than the other. When she says, “You just think you’re so smart, don’t you,” I still respond as a smartass and say, “I surely do,” but now I just also add “but so are you. This just happens to be one of those many moments where I am right.”
