I don't want those days to have gone- kids growing up

[AFingerofFudge]

I've just randomly been overcome with sadness and tears when I glanced at DS1's old room where there's a photo montage of photos from him growing up that we made for his 18th (he's 21 now).
I'm totally not a crier and DH gave me the side eye when I appeared in our room crying.
I just don't want those days to have gone. I want him to be 2 again. Even 18 or 20 years ago standing freezing in the park while they went down the slide for the 50th time, even then I knew that I would miss those days and one day would be snivelling over old photos.
Anyone else get sad about their kids growing up or is just me?? I never knew I had the tears in me!!!

Well I don't really miss the days when they were younger. Not because i didn't enjoy them - i loved evey year of my kids lives. But they are so awesome now as teens. We have so much fun. The idea of them moving out is a bit more scary but I like to think I'll be ready when that time comes!

My youngest ..of four...is 23 (!) but autistic so stays 'mine' which I selfishly rather love.
But my ds1 went to Australia in February to be with his lovely fiancee, and now cant come back even if he wanted to.. I started wrapping and stuffing the stockings (yes they still have them) and when I found his I started crying, because he's not here to open it with me! He's 27!!!!!

And DD2 is pregnant with her first baby.. she's 26, married (both living with us at the mo) and it blows my mind that she is having a baby... how can she be? She's about 11 in my head....

I adore my adult children but if someone could pop me back to a day when they were 5, 4 , 3 and 1.... just to cuddle them all over again...

6yo twins and they drive me insane with the defiance, bickering, fighting, loudness and whinging. They behave like drunken fools half the time.

Wouldn't anyone prefer adult children you can sort of reason with, making you proud as a functioning human and maybe calls you once a month, treating you like a human being?! Instead of a cook, cleaner, wrestling referee, judge and laundrette while trying to hold down a ft job?

Maybe I have very different children but I can hardly take them out for a walk or a nice family activity without drama or tears. One has a terrible temper and the girl has melodramatic meltdowns (e.g. crying for half an hour on the way to school having forgotten to bring a thing she made for a friend) I dont know if some people have rose tinted memories or simply had easier children.

Mind you, I still prefer every year and dont miss the baby or under 5 stage at all. When I see any younger kids I always feel relieved ours are older, even if only by a year or two.

no i know i found it hard in many ways however i also know i loved it. It's like i told my friend at one point years ago it's the hardest thing i've ever done sometimes and yet it's the thing i would most like to do at the same time.

Same here. DS is only 6! I should've made more of him being a baby

DD is 3 so still close enough to babyhood

"“I was learning to map my own course and determine my own destination now that my children were no longer a home. A fire burned within my soul, igniting possibilities I previously only dreamed for myself. I was choosing to feather my empty nest with leather and chrome, not a second-hand lover.”
― Debi Tolbert Duggar, Riding Soul-O"

(A wee quote I found, just in case someone could use a bit of a positive spin)

Mine are 19 and 12. I’m absolutely loving this stage. My eldest was an only for so long, in some ways is still a little babyish but I am just as amazed by her as when she was small, I appreciate the extent and depth of our conversation, always a deep child, still the same.
The second one is like lightning, darting and flying around always, absolutely brilliant conversationalist having had the benefit of an older sibling and being almost an “only” as well.

I really don’t miss the endless trips to the park, the sleepless nights, the boredom of soft play. The dinners at 6pm, wrestling bed bath book, cleaning up & collapsing afterward. No.
I am loving this bit.

I always have tea (dinner) at 6.00pm! Isn’t that a normal time?

Adult dc still need adult interventions! They fight and squabble.

Yes I think that and have young teens. Sending a 🤗

One has a terrible temper and the girl has melodramatic meltdowns (e.g. crying for half an hour on the way to school having forgotten to bring a thing she made for a friend) I dont know if some people have rose tinted memories or simply had easier children.

Tbh, prob just easier children, @Cashewrut

DS was quite hard work but shaping up ok now he’s nearly seven.

The universe tends to even out so you’ll most likely get dream teens

Yes, watched some old videos recently and remembered how lovely my DC were as toddlers (in 20s now).

@FPS123 yes to the Mac Donald’s ad single mum and all that even my son said it was great.

I cried the night before my babies first birthday because it was ‘the end of the best year of my life’
I’ll be a mess when she’s on the cusp of adult.

I went through a mourning phase after DC left home and it left a current of sadness for a few years. Pretty much over it now I have a grandchild who I see often and another on the way, but I do look forward to when they come home and I have them in the house again.

I do also enjoy the freedom and less housework.

Dd used to infiltrate my phone with her crap. This has managed to transfer itself through several phones.

Got in car today, and somehow even now her music manages to connect itself to the car music system straight away. Even though she never listens to it now.

Cue Frozen and Taylor Swift. I proper cried. Dh used to play the guitar whilst she dd sang ‘’You belong to me’ age 8. It made me cry then, but now... well😭😭😭.

I reminded her now age 14 and she told me to shut up and walked away.

I LOVE this stage of their lives. I am incredibly proud of the young adults they have grown in to.
I also enjoy their company when they are around (and on WhatsApp etc when they aren't) but I also enjoy the new freedom and extra time dh and I have to do more together, and be more spontaneous, and be able to treat ourselves more readily

I feel a bit of both

Mine are 15 and 19.

I’m very proud of them, and I love this stage of their lives, but equally I miss their younger years.

DD1 has gone off to uni and I do miss her.

Memories pop up on Facebook, or I find a forgotten photo at the back of a drawer, it makes me smile, but also a little nostalgic.

I love the people they have become and are becoming, and I also love the freedom that DH and I have now, but I do miss those younger days. I wish I could pop back now and then.

It’s also a stark reminder that I’m getting older

God yes. I feel the 'going down the slide for the 50th time in the freezing cold' and knowing, knowing- as I'm shivering and effing and blinding under my breath, dreaming of a steaming hot cuppa and the kids in bed- that this moment will go, in a nanosecond, to that realm called 'the past'.
I had a real moment last night- like that scene in American Beauty at the end where his life is flashing before his eyes. I was with DC18 who was getting a follow-up scan for a mass in his abdomen (all good news, thank God. My brother's got terminal cancer, so I needed good news!) and I'm standing there in Notting Hill Gate- the eyes start burning, the tears are stinging. I passed the pub where DC's dad and I used to spend long winter evenings 20 years ago, another pub where I sobbed my heart out after breaking up with a boyfriend- years before kids. The McDonald's where Happy Meal toys were treasured into disintegration by DC1. We passed the church hall where I've dragged DC1 every year since he was a tot to his grandmother's Russian church bazaar. I remember when he was grown up enough to help her and I came waddling in, pregnant with DC2, then 3. The borscht never changes, the cakes are reliably and wonderfully the same, the faces serving us grow 'wiser' each passing year. The kids no longer run around the church hall and I'm no longer the young mum I was, impatiently dragging kids through the cold winter to get there on time. I see the old women running the bazaar and think, "Shit. It's coming up to my turn to sit behind the tables serving piroshki and tea."

I love what has unfolded, who the children have grown into, the man DC1 is now as he approaches 19. I love, love, love who they have become my kids and am really thrilled by who and what they are still evolving into. There is nothing more beautiful than that. In many ways, I don't miss the past and I look forward to what is next on the horizon. But these moments of nostalgia do hit and hit hard enough to fire up the waterworks. And then it passes and I'm 'back in the room' and present.

I can completely understand how you feel, I live overseas and both mine have gone back to the UK. I miss the madness of teenagers!

I miss the madness of teenagers!

I don't miss the drama, friendship issues, exam stress and bullying. DD had a very up and down time as a teenager

Ginfordinner - hopefully adulthood will be calmer for her. Schoolgirl dynamics are exhausting

Mine are 17 and 21. DD went away for 6 months, aged 18. I cried every day for a week. We get on so well, and I missed her so much. Having just boys left in the house left me feeling a bit lonely. She's back now and stuck here for the duration as she lost her job (COVID) and can't find a new one.
17yo will go to uni next year and I'm not looking forward to it (but won't tell him that!) .

I sometimes look at the mess and chaos, and noise and get frustrated and then think forward to when it will be tidy and quiet and I miss them before they are even gone.

It's not the childhood I mourn, it's them as people. I love them, I like them, and I will miss their conversation, insights, humour and hugs when I don't see them every day.

It's the natural order of things for them to grow and go but they feel part of me and they will leave a gaping big hole. I'll fill it with other things but it won't be the same.

Me and DD just work on our relationship and hope that we are interesting and fun enough for them to want to visit us lots.

@AFingerofFudge, I totally get it too. Mine are 20 and 22. This is the first year both wont be here under my roof on xmas eve. I can't bare to think of waking up xmas morning without one of them. And seeing a form they filled in with "HOME" address....and it wasn't this home....

The thing is, we went through it too at their age. And I never thought of the affect on my mum or dad. And now they aren't here to ask how they felt.

It's just shit.

Mine are 6 and 3 and I wish I hadn't read this now, I'm blubbing like a loon. That said, I don't miss the baby years at all so perhaps this present won't pull too hard when it's past?