When Your Child Stops Needing You So Much
The Greatness Guide | 12th July
There is a moment, or maybe a thousand tiny ones, when you realise your children are growing away from you.
Not in a dramatic movie-scene kind of way, but in the quiet. The morning they wake up and get their own breakfast without asking. The time they answer with "nothing really" when you ask about their day. The evening they close their door, not because they are upset, but because they are becoming their own.
As my son turns into a teenager, I have been thinking a lot about this.
It does not hit all at once. It lands slowly, almost unnoticeably. A creeping tenderness that gathers in the background of ordinary days. Until one day you find yourself staring at their back as they walk ahead of you, realising you no longer reach for their hand because they do not reach back.
And there is no moment to mark it. No celebration. No calendar date that tells you, this was the last time they needed you in that way. You only notice it later. When you are folding their laundry and realise you have not heard them call your name all afternoon.
We talk a lot about the firsts. First words. First steps. First day at school. But the lasts are quieter. Unspoken. Sometimes invisible.
This season of parenting, the in-between, asks something different of us. Not the fierce, physical doing of early childhood, but a steadier kind of presence. One that holds, even from a distance. That cheers without clinging. That learns how to mother in a new language. One of restraint, of space, of watching without rushing in.
I have been feeling that shift. That ache of pride wrapped in loss. And I know I am not alone.
So many of us are walking through this liminal space, no longer the centre of their world, but still the place they return to. If this is you too, I see you. I know how it can make your heart swell and ache in the same breath.
This week on Sarah’s Thoughts, I speak about this strange, beautiful chapter. Not just about kids growing up, but about the quiet grief of change. The way we are never quite ready for what we asked for. How the love deepens even as the dependence fades.
If your heart needs company, I hope you will listen here.
With love,
Sarah
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