My Child Is Growing Up: I Miss Her So Much

Posted on July 16th, 2008 by Ruben

My eldest child has always had (allegedly) a closer relationship with her mum than me. As a parent its something one has to accept it’s just how things are sometimes. Considering males tend to be the ones that go out and work, whilst mums stay at home to care for children right from birth, it’s not that hard to imagine that the bond between mum and child will always be stronger.

I have felt sad about this in the past. In my marriage I did feel at times ‘outside’ the family. It was hard to be the suited pro who worked to please the boss to bring in the salary whilst also having to turn into a dad and husband at the end of the day to be there for others needs too. Its not easy for anyone in this situation if work takes over, which I think is pretty much where things lie for most of the western world nowadays because of the ethics of overworking yourself.

I am not less career but more with children. My eldest goes to sleep with her mum twice a week and sees her after school each day.

But I do miss her so much and feel that my lifestyle now almost has switched from physical absence to conscious absence. I have so much to think about, life feels so complicated now. Additionally, my daughter is very nearly 13 and has had a boyfriend and a busy social life with her buddies from school. This means that whilst she is here she is either texting her friends or is on MSN.

I understand and try to accept this. As kids become teenagers they want to spend less time with their parents. Their lives are blossoming and it is only natural, very natural for them to want to socialise with their friends. It is important for them to do so because they need to develop good, healthy social interaction skills so that they have sound interpersonal skills that will hold them in good stead as they go through life.

But I miss her and feel that the years are shooting by and little happens to make anything we do a memory that will be happy to reflect on in years to come. I feel terrible that my children are from a broken family. I feel terribly sad for them to have experienced a mum and a dad that live in different houses. It’s something I find very hard to deal with at times and want to compensate for by buying them things (and getting myself more in debt as a result).

I am currently looking for something that I can do to engage my eldest. Like many parents in the past and future, I will keep on trying to engage my child, broken family or not.

I found an image of my daughter sitting in a tree with a big smile on her face. The picture was taken when she was around 3 years old when we lived as a family. After streams of tears I was non the wiser for why, for the past couple of weeks I seem to feel so unhappy about how things are with my children. My partner feels the same. Maybe we should just live with our own children… maybe we are just wanting to do what we tell others not to, that is over-compensate for the failures we are as parents to give them an unspoilt upbringing and blame ourselves for the failures they have innocently had to experience.

Maybe… that just teaches them something that we were not taught: don’t expect life to be fair.

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