Is this mine to do? That has been the phrase in my mind often over these last couple of weeks. In our own particular situation, this relates to our newly empty nest, and one of our fledglings who is in the early stages of settling into new life in halls in a different city.
Do you remember when you first left home?
Perhaps it was straight from school to go to college or uni, or take up a new job.
All those things that we have to learn all at once – making new friends, finding our way around a new place, a new course and way of studying. Negotiating our way round new social groupings, and the freedom of being away from home and the opportunities that opens up. Cooking, food shopping, clothes washing, budgeting. The shocking realisation that if you want to eat, you have to first buy the food then cook it yourself.
Every meal, every day.
Gosh.
Exhausting isn’t it.
No wonder as parents, we can have trouble letting go and stepping back.
Everything in us might want to step IN, and help, sort, fix. Or control, warn, tell, instruct.
Is this mine to do?
When things are hard for the fledgling and there is sadness, lonelieness and homesickness, all we want to do is swoop in and scoop those baby birds whose wings are needing a bit of bolstering. But this is rarely the right answer. We learn how to cope by finding our way through the struggles and coming up with solutions by ourselves.
We get things wrong, we fail, and then we learn that failure actually simply means a
First
Attempt
In
Learning.
So we have another shot, we try something different, and in the process we gain courage, resilience and self-awareness. Having the mother bird fix things for us delays learning these hard lessons. More here on failing and why it is so important to our learning.
Or it may be that our fledgling is flying a little too high for our liking, making choices that we are struggling with. There is little to no communication with home, and WhatsApp shows us that our precious fledgling was awake when we would much rather they were tucked safely in bed. Their WhatsApp was “last seen today at 4.53am”.
Be still my troubled heart.
I am speaking to a number of friends these days who have youngsters newly away from home. Stories range wildly, which reassures me that there is no right or wrong way to do this. Five parties then hitting the casino in one night. No communication at all apart from short, terse text messages. Major personality clashes with new flatmates (who are total strangers, but there is so much expectation that you are going to become instant best friends and it is going to be the best experience of your life.)
The perspective of the youngster is about freedom, new opportunities, new friends, new experiences.
But the perspective of the parent of said youngster is now very different and concerned with safety, sensibleness, studies. We might think back to our own student days, and shudder at some of what we did and the stress we put our own parents through.
Hmmm.
So the question “is this mine to do?” takes on a different meaning depending on what it is that are having to resist doing.
The temptation might be to give lots of advice and solutions and instruction about how to make friends, who to message and what to say. Go to this, say that, put yourself out there.
Or it might be to step in with instructions and directions on how to deal with clashes with flatmates on whose mess is in the kitchen. Be firm, don’t clean it up, have a flat meeting.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is resisting the desire to phone every day. Not just to check in with how they are, but simply because we really miss them and want to fill the hole that their absence leaves in the house.
None of this is right or wrong. We know ourselves, and we know those we love and what they need.
A good question to ask.
And asking if this is mine to do does not apply solely to parenting growing youngsters. There are many situations in life where it is a useful question to ask.
The question “is this mine to do?” is a great way to check in with our motivations before we take action.
- What am I missing or most afraid of?
- Is this more about me or them?
- What do I most need?
- What do they most need?
- What would the best outcome be here?
Stop and consider with me how that might apply to your own life this week. Where are you tempted to step in to a situation that is not yours to fix/sort/control? What is it about needing to control that is so hard to let go of? There may be things we have to unlearn. But asking is this mine to do is a great starting point.
And if you are going through a transition of your own, and need someone to help you find a way through, life coaching might be just what you need. Get in touch for your free taster session to explore this for yourself.