subject: Daughters Holiday??? [print this page] Letting your children grow up and fly the nest is worrying. A checklist of how to cope helps focus on practicalities and avert your thoughts from the dangers that may lurk. She is travelling to Spain with her friend from school and I am trying to push thoughts away about their parenting skills and are their moral codes the same as mine? How do you achieve the fine balance between letting them learn and grown with independence and confidence and then protect them from dangers that lurk at every corner. I wont be there to police her ample bosom in low cut tops she favours. I wont be there to make sure she is applying her suntan cream. Or to make sure she is eating properly and going to sleep at a proper time. It adds to my anxiety that her friend has recently split up from her psycho boyfriend and is now mourning like a woman at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and added to that is on the verge of an eating disorder. Her parents are liberal and laid back. So here is my checklist to keep me sane.
1.7 x facecloths so that she doesnt need a face towel that will smell horrid and be full of germs after one week.
2.Travel insurance checked that valid when she is away on her own
3.Airline and country checked ok to travel alone with other adults
4.Sun tan cream factor 50 with label scrubbed off and replaced with carrot oil guaranteed to fry
5.Pair of cotton full length pyjamas so that she doesnt itch if they have biological soap powder on their sheets in their apartment
6.Sensible shoes that she thinks are cool and yes it did take 4 shopping trips and 18 shops.
7.Tablets with simple instructions on as she has a dyslexic sieve brain.
8.Sit down for serious talk that she needs to be sensible and the compulsory rolling of eyeballs and curled lip by her.
9.Visit to the parents who are taking her and giving them our emergency contact details. OH why did I agree? Allergies forgot to put on list.
So will she come back any different? I hope not and perhaps sending her to the local dubious comprehensive was worth it as she is pretty streetwise to survive an hour at that place where most of her year group wear nicotine patches and have had Chlamydia tests.
So will I be different? I will have developed a few deeper wrinkles that face cream cant penetrate and worry lines. My husband is getting ready for the empty nest better than me and is trying to console me in his quiet gentle way by suggesting a night away in a hotel in the lakes. Perhaps my empty nest is not so bad after all.
by: mark williams
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