I didn’t think it was much fun at the time but now I miss my children’s early years

There is a lot of talk about empty nest syndrome, but just as common, yet barely acknowledged or discussed, is what millions of parents live through every day in the middle years of parenting, when their children are teenagers and still live in the nest: full empty nest syndrome.

When our children are very young we think we are living in hell.

We think that nothing could ever be as bad as this living hell, except possibly if our father-in-law came round for tea as well and pointed out how we should just relaaaax more.

For this, we want to kill him, but resist because he is very occasionally useful for emergency babysitting.

When we’re deep in the exhausting Hell of the Early Years, the temptation to abandon the children in a petrol station forecourt with a packet of Skips to keep them going and a note saying Out of Order taped to its dummy, can be overwhelming.

This Living Hell scenario of the Early Years, suffocating us slowly from all sides like a gigantic, infected pustule of exhaustion, tantrums, resentment, laundry and human excrement, has the unfortunate side-effect of somewhat overshadowing the beauty and wonder and loveliness of life with young children.

So many times I wished those years were over. Over and over.

And over again.

We all do.

Jeez, I can’t wait until they grow up! I’d think, crawling across the floor to put the jigsaw puzzles away every night, picking glitter out of the crevices on my forehead, folding mountains of tiny items of clothing, reading The Gruffalo and doing all the voices for the 1,000th time until my neck snaps and my eyes turn to dust and crumble on to the Star Wars duvet cover, taking the nappy bins out, scraping the scrambled egg off the kitchen floor and trying to get a raincover to stay on the damned buggy.

I can’t wait, I’d think, until this is over.

But what we don’t appreciate – because humans never do until it’s too late and it’s gone – is what we have. This is a huge shame.

Because one day, it is over.

And what every parent I know in the Middle Years misses, is the joy and happiness of those early years. I miss it. I miss the smiles, the giggles, the chuckles and the toothless grins.

I miss getting a handful of chubby ankles and kiss-me cheeks.

I miss being able to kiss those kiss-me cheeks without the kiss being wiped off immediately, even when they are asleep, lest they contract Mummy Leprosy.

I miss hearing “Mummy, look what I’ve made!”

I miss being able to please them.

If I’m honest, I think I miss being needed, and wanted, and feeling loved, and appreciated.

And I miss smiling.

Now, my children can look at me with eyes that summon up all the hatred, shame, pity and disgust it is possible for one person to muster, and shoot it at me like a burning dagger to the long wilted maternal heart.

Usually before breakfast.

It’s normal. They’re teenagers.

But it doesn’t make it any easier to bear when it’s in your face every day and you’ve just made the dinner they love and helped with their maths homework.

When the joy goes – and it does, because life moves on and you can’t play peek-a-boo with a 12-year-old who wants to play Minecraft with his similarly zit-infested mates – it feels like bereavement.

We don’t really wish the early years back, of course; it was, after all, a living hell.

But it doesn’t mean we don’t miss aspects of it. It can take years to realise that this new, tired heaviness and deep, unfathomable sadness that we think might be depression, or midlife crisis, or the wrong kind of under-eye cream, is in fact just a deep, unspoken, unrecognised grief at the loss of something so magical and beautiful, purely and totally, unashamedly, freely happy.

And we never really get that back.

Those young children are dead now. They are gone.

Their faces have changed, their bodies have morphed into someone else’s, their voices have dropped, teeth have been straightened, moods have been altered and characters have been transformed.

They are new people, living in my house with me.

Part of these Middle Years of parenting is slowly getting to know these new people. Meeting them. Talking to them. Finding out what they like. What they believe in. What they dream of.

Who they are.

And even the people they are now will change.

Sometimes I feel as if these middle years are a long, slow goodbye, to the people I gave birth to and nurtured, taught and played with, helped and loved.

I have fallen in love with the “new them”, of course, and I adore them. They are wonderful people, changing all the time, and impressing and inspiring me with all the things they can do now.

It doesn’t mean I don’t miss who they were when they were little, and who we were, both individually and as a family, back then.

The easy happiness. The smiling.

Those days will never come back.

The bereavement is long, slow and refreshed every day.

They haven’t left home.

The nest isn’t empty.

It’s full.

Full of reminders of how things were and how different they are now.

We live in it, constantly.

It’s normal to feel sadness about it, and you are not alone if you find yourself grieving for a time that has gone, and children who sat on your lap and kissed you.

The best thing to do is talk to one of your friends with children of the same age and tell them how you feel.

The chances are that they are feeling exactly the same and thought it was only they who felt like that, and that they are very glad to be able to share it with someone.

Of course, when the nest really is empty – something that happens horribly quickly – you’ll wish to have Full Empty Nest syndrome back again.

That’s just the way humans are.

@lizfraser1

FEN syndrome: the telltale signs

You suddenly realise you haven’t read a bedtime story for years, and start trying to read Charlie and Lola books to your 15-year-old.

You try to cuddle your children much more than necessary or desirable, and just end up getting a shoulder in your eye socket and an icy death-stare.

You invite your children to sleep in your bed with you, having spent most of the first six years of their lives trying to get them to stay in theirs.

You find yourself asking your teenaged children if they love you. And if you’re a good mummy. And … do you really love me? Do you??

You send your children text messages saying “Have a lovely day at school!” before they have reached the end of the road.

You start to call them entirely age-inappropriate names, like Boobah, Weenie and Muffin.

You propose a “Let’s pretend you’re still a toddler!” day of making playdough sausages and stick pasta on to paper plates, as soon as they have finished their GCSE maths revision. This is met with a post on Instagram describing you as “epically tragic”.

You look forward to your children coming home every day but, when they do, they disappear into their rooms with their mates, leaving you standing in the kitchen holding an unwanted piece of toast, weeping.

LF