No One Prepares You for your Kids Dating

    I remember my mother telling me that it felt like she blinked and my sister and I were adults with children of our own.  These were in the days that I had a little girl in school, twin preschoolers, and an infant and it felt like my sanity may not last me to the end of the day.  I gave her that little smile, the smile that said I'm being polite, but I think you're full of horse poop because these days I am putting in right now feel like they are endless.
   
  My mother's words no longer sound like the words of someone who is wistfully recalling her younger days.  Those words hold a frightening amount of truth right now.  My babies are not babies anymore, and it hurts more than I anticipated that it would.  I can no longer protect them from the world.  I have to let them go out and get hurt, and all I can do is hold them when it's all done.  I feel so powerless.

    I knew that this day was coming.  I knew it was coming, but when you look into the distance things seem so tiny and so far away, it's not until you are speeding up on them that you realize how unprepared for the hugeness of it all you actually are.  This is how I am feeling right now, like I am perched upon the edge, unsure of my balance, terrified that I will fall.

    So often when people reminisce about their teens and dating they remember with the rose coloured glasses tightly affixed to their face.  They remember the highs.  When you see that guy and he looks at you and you feel that mixture of euphoria and nausea.  When that boy you really like asks you out and you feel like you won the lottery and once again that mixture of euphoria and nausea.  How often do you remember the agony of heartbreak.  That boy who you love, but who doesn't know you exist, or just doesn't care that you exist.  That feeling like someone literally reached into your chest, pulled out your heart with their bare hands and then shredded it with a knife.  That feeling where you want to lay in your bed, and wish you could just cease to exist, the pain does not feel like it will ever lift. When I look back on my youth I remember the boys that I loved, but I remember those feelings of agony.

    My kids are getting older now.  Gracie is going into grade 12 this year, and I'm not sure how that happened.  I feel like we were just picking out that special backpack and lunch pail for the first day of junior kindergarten.  I felt like she was such a big girl and I cried.  The twins are going into grade 9.  Those tiny babies I was terrified to hold because they were so tiny and fragile looking 6 pounds 4 ounces and 6 pounds 7 ounces are now 5 foot 4 and 6 foot 2.  My miracle baby, the baby who should not even exist is going into grade 5.  Somehow that time that it felt like life was crawling by, was switched to fast forward and no-one told me.

    I know that I am biased but my children are beautiful.  I see the way boys look at my stunningly beautiful big girls.  I see girls rubberneck to look at my giant of a son who has shed his baby looks and his face is becoming much more chiseled and grown up looking.  This is what I wished for.  I wanted them to grow up and be strong and beautiful.  I wanted them to be independent and take the world by storm.  I've been preparing them, or at least trying to prepare them.  When I thought about their future I only saw the beauty, my rose coloured glasses tightly affixed to my face.  They are so smart, and beautiful, and confident, no-one would ever hurt them.

    Here is what no one prepares you for in your children't teen years.  People are going to hurt them, they may not do it intentionally, but people are going to hurt them.  It's not like when they were tiny and you could call up the school and get justice.  It's not like when you could casually mention to that hurtful child's parents what they had done.  No, now I have to sit on the sidelines watching the pain, and all I can do is watch.  I can offer advice and hugs and ice-cream, but I can't fix broken hearts, there are no bandaids for that.  There is nothing I can do to make it better, no amount of kissing boo boos to take away the pain.  It is killing me to just sit on the sidelines, doing nothing to protect them.  I know that they need the broken hearts.  It's the failed relationships that make you realize what you want in a good one.  Broken hearts build character, at least that's what I keep telling myself.  I lived through broken hearts, the kids will too... but I didn't anticipate how much my heart would break along side of theirs.

    As the parent of teens you want your children to date.  You want your children to feel that euphoria of their first kiss, the sweaty palms of holding hands.  You want them to live, really and truly live.  I want them to live life like a person who is starving and digs in with two hands.  I want them to take risks (within reason), and to make mistakes (within reason).  All of the things that I want for them, I do so theoretically.  Theoretically I want them to do all of these things, because the theory behind it makes sense.  The up close reality is scary as hell because all I can do is watch from a far.  It's like when they learned to ride their bikes and I watched as they wobbled and sometimes fell,  blood and all.  Eventually they learned to ride, but there were injuries along the way.

    No one prepares you for this chapter, the dating chapter.  It's like the secret chapter that only reveals itself when you come to it.  The thing that scares me is that if I am so emotionally involved right now, and they have only dipped their toes into the dating waters, how will I manage when they dive in and swim out so far that I can't rescue them?