Loving a teenager, I’ve decided, is like hugging an armful of sand. Try though I may, it’s impossible to gather all of that sand, and even if I could, I can’t hold onto it—even for a moment.

It was a joke at first when I said, “I’ve done attachment, now I need to do detachment.”

In the beginning, the mother-child relationship is symbiotic. Babies don’t know that they are separate; they cannot sustain an image of a parent in their absence. Over the course of five months to two years, the baby slowly sees the parent as a distinct person. This is where attachment theory finds its genesis.

We became what is called attachment parents, but for a long time I was resistant to the moniker, preferring to see us through the eyes of anthropology, or what we were pre-wired to do. I was drawn to Liedloff’s Continuum Concept and Small’s Our Babies Ourselves. I came to attachment parenting when I felt an alignment between the needs of my child and a quiet, ancient voice within me. A welcome departure from the authoritarian household in which I was raised (with a minimal amount of touch), I observed how holding and carrying G kept me more connected on a primal level. But my feelings were after-thoughts. What really happened is that she was unhappy/fussy/miserable/possibly colic-y, and we tried everything. What worked was listening to her. She calmed when she had our physical proximity, while riding in a sling, sleeping when we were nearby. It had to do with closeness. So that is what we did. She led; we followed.

When G was tiny I had ideas of how to balance my life, but true balance happened when I just let go and allowed the days to unfold. I made an effort to be emotionally and intellectually present. In the early months, I wanted to savor each moment in case that was all we got; later, I felt like I was touching truth, interacting with this fresh soul. Her insights—verbal and non-verbal—shook me awake. We grew very close. If she had her way and time could stand still, I imagine she would have been homeschooled, and we would have done crafts and played games together forever.

I’ll never fully know all of the ingredients that went into our stew, but now we are on the other side. She is seeking greater autonomy both physically and emotionally. I’ve tried to offer it in multiple forms, and her proximity to her boyfriend (next door!) allows her to get it literally in considerable measure. I try to talk about our differences and keep more to myself. As a writer and stay-at-home parent, I’ve been able to make my life easily interruptible for her. It’s an indulgence to focus increasingly more on my own journey, and I am savoring it.

But I am beginning to see just how difficult detachment must be for her. My voice alone seems to affect her. Many days include the request (or demand) “don’t talk.” “I want silence.” “I don’t have time to talk.” “I DON’T WANT TO TALK WITH YOU.” She says when I talk I “get in her head.”

Thanks to Anthony Wolf, I understand that the teenage conscience apparently sounds a lot like a parent’s voice. A sound that G would like to turn off, thank you very much. It helps me to know this because if I were in her shoes, I would want to turn me off, too. Who wants to hear your conscience talking all of the time? I need to tread tenderly here. Soon, her conscience will sound like her own voice.

Was this attachment done too well? Or is this just the way it is? What surprises me is that she needs any proof that we are separate.

Her needs and emotions echo her early childhood, absent my ability to hug or wipe away her tears. As she once could not hold an image of me in her mind when I left the room, today I am noticing an homage to those days. Can she intellectualize my autonomy? Not surprisingly, I suppose, I don’t think she sees me as capable of being my own person, a freshly incarnated version of the person I was fifteen years ago, before her existence. How could she hold an image of me separate from my role as her mother since because I have been nothing else in her eyes? Perhaps part of my job now is to define my own separateness somehow, for both of us.

I’m thinking of what worked for me in the early years when I had preconceived ideas of things like cribs and weaning. When life conflicted with them, I had to let go. Right now I hear a chorus of let go.

At times it feels like my skin is being caught between cog wheels. Like we are doing worse than separating. I’m losing her. Even if this is a matter of semantics, the concept of each of us going our separate ways seems so much more palatable to me. Up to this point in my life, if someone didn’t want to be with me, I would leave or get out of their way. How do you stay present as a parent under these circumstances? Here are two answers I have received: you just get used to it. Or my favorite: keep coming back with love.

Some days this seems much easier than others.

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Please note: If you have thoughts on this or any of my other posts, I invite you to join a secret group I have set up on Facebook where we can have a group chat. Please reach out to me and I will send you an invite to join. Thank you!

Reference: Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? By Anthony Wolf