Enabling

On a Friday afternoon at the end of April, I drove down to school and picked up my oldest daughter from her first year of college. I stayed through the weekend. She wasn't getting along with her friends. She hated the changes in the program for next term. By Monday she had decided she wasn't going back next year.

We let her make that decision. But today I realized that I haven't allowed her to deal with the consequences of it. I've been too busy scheduling visits to other schools and finding her SAT scores and applying for a copy of her social security card because she doesn't know where her original is.

We drove to the community college today, where she plans to take some classes in the fall until she can audition for other schools. We drove there to give them her ss number so she can apply online. She didn't bring her photo id with her. And she said "It's no big deal. We'll just go home and get it and I'll come back tomorrow."

And there I sat, the big dumb ma. Running around and fretting and pushing and helping myself to death. My wasted time is no. big. deal.

Haven't these years with my son taught me anything? I can't care about the consequences for her. And I'm tired of being the dumping ground when things don't go how she wants them.

I feel like the great enabler when what I want to be is an encourager. Do I communicate to my offspring that they can't do anything for themselves? My husband says that she's just been refusing to step up to the plate. Partly because she's depressed over how things turned out at her first school. And partly because now her life is on hold again. He feels we have to push, maybe even push her over, in order to get her up and moving in the new direction.

I guess I needed to get pushed over, too, in order to realize that I need to back off.