SADNESS AND SEPARATION: NECESSARY COMPANIONS

There is sadness involved in parenting. Ironically, this sadness can arise when children accomplish what parents have worked hard to help them achieve; they begin to accept responsibility for their own lives. Children decrease their reliance on their parents and move along the continuum towards independence. This movement is often confusing and emotional for parents. Parents can experience a multitude of feelings as they struggle with the counterintuitive requirement of allowing their children to become independent decision makers while simultaneously wanting to protect, nurture, and guide them.Birth commences the individuation/separation process; the baby begins his/her life as a physically separate being. Assuming that the child’s development is within the expected limits, the separation process continues gradually through infancy, early childhood, latency, adolescence, and into young adulthood. There are numerous examples of the child’s slow progression from dependence to independence. He/she moves from being passively fed to self feeding, from diapers to independent toileting. The child’s world expands from the close home environment to nursery, middle, and high schools. Children develop their individual talents and personal interests. They participate and compete in sports, the arts, or academics. They cultivate and maintain non-familial relationships with childcare providers, teachers, and friends.

In the adolescent years, teens learn to drive, allowing for travel further from home and without the presence of parents. Teenagers obtain employment and generate their own income. They begin to date and establish close, loving bonds with others. They shift their primary, intimate relatedness from parents to a boy or girlfriend.

With each successful negotiation of these developmental and societal challenges, children increase their independence from their parents. The child’s successes are indications that he/she is healthy and well-adjusted, able to make age-appropriate gains. Parents feel proud of their children’s growth and maturation.

In addition to feelings of pride, other emotions can arise. These can include feelings of sadness. Parents frequently experience an emotional void as their children’s need for them shifts. Throughout the child’s life, parents have thoughtfully considered and carefully selected from a multitude of choices in relation to the feeding, educating, and disciplining of their children. Parents have often been closely involved in their child’s life, orchestrating and participating in their activities. They often know their child better than any one else. As a child becomes increasingly independent, increasingly private, and sometimes emotionally distant from its parents, parents naturally feel sad. There is a loss. The child’s developmental momentum carries him/her forward and away while the parents remain behind.

It is important for parents to become aware of their feelings of sadness. Without the awareness of this feeling, parents may unknowingly interfere with their child’s ability to move forward with their task of separating. Parents may subtly sabotage the child’s independent directions and ideas. The sabotage may hold the unconscious wish to preserve the relationship with the child in the way it has been in the past. Parents also may wish to avoid experiencing the pain of the child’s separation and may therefore attempt to keep their child from individuating. This typically happens outside of a parent’s awareness. When parents begin to interfere with their child’s individuation process, the child may respond with escalating inappropriate behaviors, oppositional behaviors, frequent arguments, or depressive symptoms. Although these responses may occur in children for a variety of reasons, a parent’s unacknowledged sadness during the separation process could be one contributing element.

For the mutual benefit of parent and child, parents need to create appropriate avenues for the expression of the difficult feeling of sadness. Talking with one’s significant other, or co-parent may be a first place to start. Finding support through sharing with other parents and close friends can be comforting. Sometimes talking individually or in a group with a therapist can be useful.

The separation process as a developmental line includes two directions: outwardly directed for children and inwardly focused for parents. Part of what parents may observe should they direct their gaze internally is sadness. For parents, grieving the loss of dependent children is necessary. It releases both parents and children to pursue their independent lives with energy, joy, and creativity and contributes to the possibility of maintaining a future loving bond.