After The Kids Go To Bed

Our oldest son turns twenty-one next month.

Our second son will be nineteen, and our twin boys will be seventeen later this year.

For the first time in more than twenty years, I feel like parenting is slowly lifting off my shoulders.

Not completely, of course. I don’t think parenting ever truly ends. But the years of daily responsibility—the teaching, driving, worrying, correcting, reminding, and wondering if I was doing any of it right—are beginning to fade into the background.

Looking back, it feels like a very long adventure.

When our boys were little, my husband wanted to homeschool them. I was terrified.

I grew up in Japan, where homeschooling was almost unheard of. Children went to school. That was simply what people did. If you saw a school-age child in a store during the day, people would wonder why they weren’t in class.

Part of me wanted to send our boys to school and let someone else handle the academics. But another part of me worried that they would spend most of their day sitting in classrooms with little time left for everything else I wanted them to experience.

We wanted them to have time for art, music, outdoor adventures, and learning practical skills. We wanted education to be part of life, not separate from it.

Still, I wasn’t a teacher.

Many nights, after the kids were asleep, I cried.

I didn’t know if we were making the right decision.

Eventually, I stopped worrying so much about teaching everything and focused on the basics. If our boys could read well, write clearly, and understand math, they could learn almost anything else.

That part worked.

The harder lesson wasn’t academics.

It was trust.

 

Learning to Trust

I worried constantly.

Would he make friends?

Would he become lonely?

Would he miss out on something important?

Then one day he discovered the skate park.

My husband worried about injuries and the culture there. I worried too.

Our son went anyway.

Before long, he had made friends.

Some of those friendships have lasted for years, even across different states. One of those boys is still a good friend. He is studying to become a doctor, and they are traveling to the Pacific Northwest together next month.

What I learned was simple:

My son didn’t need me to build his entire social life for him.

He was capable of doing that himself.

 

Years later, our second son taught me a different lesson.

When he entered high school, he fell in with a crowd that influenced him in ways that worried us. It was painful to watch. We talked. We advised. We warned. None of it seemed to matter.

At one point he told me, “There is no peer pressure. I’m the one who is choosing what I do.”

I remember feeling helpless.

Eventually, our family moved away, and he finished his senior year online.

Something changed.

Today he wakes up early, exercises, eats healthy food, keeps a strict routine, and spends his time building his future. He recently graduated with a strong GPA and is working toward starting his own business.

The same determination that once worried me is now one of his greatest strengths.

Looking back, I realize something.

My children were never becoming versions of me.

They were becoming themselves.

Each of them has strengths I didn’t fully see when they were younger. Sometimes I underestimated them. Sometimes I worried too much. Sometimes I forgot that they were developing their own ability to solve problems, make friends, recover from mistakes, and find their way.

Maybe that is one of the hardest parts of parenting.

Not teaching.

Not protecting.

Trusting.

 

The boys are now nearly grown.

But one thing has remained the same through all those years of parenting.

After the kids go to bed, I still like to sit down with a cup of tea and treats.

Well, if I can find them.

I still hide treats from my husband and four sons.

Otherwise, they don’t last very long around here.

The problem is that I often forget where I hid them.

My husband says that’s because I’m a squirrel.

Honestly, he may have a point.

 

The artwork featured in this essay is After the Kids Go to Bed, inspired by the quiet moments that come after the chaos of the day.