She’s leaving home, bye-bye

“She (we gave her most of our lives)

Is leaving (sacrified most of our lives)

Home (we gave her everything money could buy)”

-The Beatles

My first-born daughter has left me. This is not the way it was supposed to go. Our parting was supposed to a different sort of tearful. They were supposed to be bittersweet tears as I left her at college, not the tears of rage that rolled down her face as she stood outside of my car and told me she wouldn’t be coming home with me because she was 18 and she could do as she chose. Not the poorly repressed tears of devastation and bewilderment that rolled down my face as I drove away. It was not supposed to be this way.

I still don’t know why she’s made this choice. I can guess. I have theories, but I don’t know because she won’t say. I believe the root of it is the typical folly of youth. We have all been young and stupid enough to believe we knew more than we really did, stupid enough not to leave room for the possibility that our own advice may not be the best advice and ignore the counsel of others instead of carefully considering them.

I’ve been made enough poor choices to have learned take the time to carefully consider my actions before taking them. When I called her spoiled and selfish and entitled for making everyone else is the house miserable with her terrible attitude and self-serving prerogative - it was a measured choice. I had bitten back those words every time they came to my lips previously, and there were many times.

My eldest has always been the most high-maintenance of all my children. Even at 18, she needs more attention and supervision than her younger siblings do. She complains about them, that they are mean to her and bully her, rather than the expected dynamic. She has always needed the most work, the most handholding, the most affirmation and support. She is the mostly easily upset and when she gets upset she makes sure her mood is felt by the most people. I have always wanted her to develop thicker skin, more resilience, more tolerance, but while I waited for her life experiences to cultivate these things, I have tried my best to accommodate her, comfort her, and keep her happy. Perhaps this was my mistake? For all her faults, she has at least as many virtues. She is talented, and capable of great determination. She’s emotionally intelligent, and an excellent leader. She can be very loving and kind. She has been, by and large, a “good” child irrespective of how labor intensive she has been to raise.

When I took her phone and laptop, it was a measured choice, and when I moved her out of her own room and into a shared room with her younger sister, it was a calculated decision too. These things were meant to teach her humility after she screamed at me for the first time in her life. To show her that if someone has provided you with all of these things, you should value the person as much as you value the things they give you. To teach her there will be real consequences if she chooses to behave this way as an adult in the world. She wanted to leave then, and I wouldn’t let her. I wouldn’t let her go, because that is also unrealistic, you don’t simply get to walk away from every situation that makes you upset or person that says a thing to you that you don’t like. I wouldn’t let her go but she left anyway.