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Letting Go of Traditions to Benefit Relationships
Sometimes you need to let go before you’re ready, especially as a single parent
I recently spoke with a mom who was facing a dilemma. Her 16-year-old daughter’s boyfriend and his family had invited the daughter to a Christmas Eve party. But the mom and her children had some Christmas Eve traditions that Mom was painfully aware would only exist for a couple more years before the daughter was on her own and perhaps wouldn’t be home at Christmas at all.
Her first instinct was to tell her daughter no. But then she thought about it and acknowledged that the entire reason behind saying no was that she wasn’t ready for her daughter to grow up. She loves their family tradition, loves the time spent together as a family, and simply wasn’t ready to give that up yet. And even though she knew that wasn’t reason enough to tell her daughter no, she still wanted to say no anyway.
It’s understandable. As parents, the older our kids get, the more aware we are of how fleeting our time is with them. And as single parents, perhaps splitting holidays with our kids, we’re even more painfully aware of how few years left we have to engage in our traditions with them. If we’re not dating, we might even start to imagine life after the kids have left, envisioning holidays spent alone…
