These are poignant last days for parents with a youngest child about to leave primary school. Last sports day. Last play. Last school run. Last Monday morning at the school gate with all those other parents and children that you’ve shared so much with. Children leave a large part of their childhood behind at primary school. They take a giant step into adolescence, excited and nervous about the prospect of greater independence and responsibility. But it’s also a profound rite of passage for parents, signifying the loss of your last baby and the birth of a whole new way of life, with teenagers.
With two teenage girls in our house, plus parents growing tired with middle age, emotions can be volatile. All of us are on the cusp of change and it’s hard to know sometimes who is the most moody. The 17-year-old has the stress of exams, the epic decision of which universities to apply for (and to study what?) and the exhilarating/terrifying prospect of leaving home. There’s still just a tantalising hint of the innocent child to the 12-year-old, but as she slides into bed beside me for that first morning kiss, she manages to tell me that I’m fat, my hair needs cutting, that the bags under my eyes are the size of suitcases and that my breath stinks.
Early adolescence is a time of hypercriticism and the price you pay for bringing up your kids to be outspoken is that they don’t hold back. She may be right, but when you get this sort of dressing down 35,000 times a day it can be hard. She’s lippy, knowledgeable, argumentative, forceful, torn between excitement at becoming a teenager and fear at losing security, and there’s enough premenstrual tension building before that seismic first period to launch Concorde. They are irritable; I’m irritable and when they’re not fighting with me, they’re fighting with each other, usually over clothes.
At 48, I feel overwhelmed sometimes by their exasperation and their youth. I’m aware that I’m unlikely to ever look or feel better than this and I’m starting to notice, in obituaries, the age at which people die. The teenagers rage at having to deal with new responsibilities that they crave but cannot always cope with, as well as the deep insecurities that come from feeling as if they are permanently on stage, being judged.
I rage over trivial things — empty sweet packets and juice cartons tossed onto the floor — displacement rage at the fact that my darling, chubby, adoring babies have grown into languid, selfish beings who find my presence so embarrassing and irritating at times that they just don’t want me around.
They have every reason to get cross as they grapple with the confusions inherent in growing up and it’s the tired parents who become the punchbags. It’s part of the job description but it can be hard to stay rational and calm when you’ve had a difficult day.
They can get as angry as they like with you, but as soon as you lose your temper they’re so affronted, their rage is even more explosive and you feel like you’ve failed the good parent test again. It helps to be preoccupied or hide when they shout “Mu-um” in that irritated tone of voice, because getting involved often only makes things worse. If I get caught in the crossfire, my fuse is now so short with the volatility of the menopause that I shout, say the wrong things, until inevitably someone says, “You’ve written a book on teenagers, you ought to know better”, which just makes me even crosser.
Understanding why teenagers can be volatile, selfish, dogmatic, judgmental and deeply critical of everything you do — from pouring the boiling water onto the teabag in the morning to cleaning your teeth — doesn’t help you to cope with the emotions that come from being continually assessed and battered: the rejection and the profound loss of that sweet, huggable loveable child.
When your last child enters adolescence, the atmosphere in the house changes radically. Small children dominate every minute of the day. You’re so close physically, hugging, kissing, carrying, holding hands and playing that there is a delicious all-consuming intimacy that evaporates once they leave middle childhood.
We’re four separate individuals now getting on with our different lives who meet over dinner to share our news. Weekends have changed. We all sleep late in the mornings. After nearly two decades of taking the children to the park or the playground, whatever the weather, I now go there alone with the dog. There’s time to lie on the sofa and read a novel. No more damp, crowded swimming pools. No more need for Pizza Express. No more Disney cartoon films. And the toys are never played with. The dolls’ house and a huge collection of Sylvanian Families sit forlorn on the playroom floor until 12 large teenagers invade the house and make them do rude things.
It’s a poignant time, focusing the mind on the time we have left and how we want to live it, and that sense of reflection affects men and women equally. It’s middle-aged men who buy enormous motorbikes or sports cars, take up rigorous fitness training, have cosmetic surgery and affairs with very young women to prove they’re not past it. One husband I heard of went out and bought a chainsaw and vented his frustration on the garden shrubbery. He made such a large pile of sticks and twigs behind the back door that he couldn’t get back into the house. I’m lucky, then, that my husband has decided at the age of 52 just to retrain as a teacher in a primary school in Tower Hamlets, a gruelling course requiring support that he probably doesn’t get.
But when we’re all up, family life is richer than it has ever been before. They bring a whole new vista on life to the table — hilarious impressions of teachers, passionate, humbling concerns for those who are less well off, as well as a vibrant energy that is infectious. We laugh over memories and sing songs by the Beatles. Our conversation retains that intimacy but there is so much more to talk about — politics, Shakespeare, Kathleen Turner in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Picasso’s blue period and the latest single by the Maccabees.
I get huge pleasure from watching them flourish as distinct individuals. I don’t just love them because they are my children, I like them as people and I like their friends. The small child is winsome, but it is only once they hit their teens that you see the person they are becoming and marvel. You begin to understand that their life force is far more powerful than anything we have ever done for them or to them. If only we could save ourselves the guilt by knowing that when they were younger.
Their growing intellect brings a refreshing wisdom. I value their opinions and advice for they have watched us all their lives and know our weaknesses and strengths. When we go shopping, they force me to try on clothes I would never have considered before. I went to a party and my 12-year-old insisted on doing my make-up. I never wear make-up but recognised that it mattered to her. She did an amazing job. She felt so proud that she could make me look younger and less embarrassing for her, and it was soothing to feel her massage my face so that I now insist that she does it regularly.
But perhaps the most important aspect of not having a small child any more is that I can feel the woman I was before motherhood returning. Motherhood feels at times like a giant overcoat that we have to put on, smothering the woman beneath. We give and we give, constantly putting the needs of our children, and the need to earn money to provide for them, before our own pleasures. It’s demanding, exhilarating, exhausting and life-changing. When we’re deep into the routines of daily life with small children, it is hard to imagine life ever changing, but once the routines have gone and their needs grow more sophisticated, the load lifts and there is more time to daydream and be me again.
And although I mourn sometimes the loss of those years — few things beat the deep recognition that comes from feeling your own cherub in your arms — I also feel a huge sense of relief at the chance to be selfish again. We go out more as a couple, for long walks where we pick up the threads of how we were before we were a family, a relationship made stronger and closer because of the children. We talk about our future and make plans for the active years we have left. There is time for lovemaking in the afternoons and visits to the cinema. There is more time for friends. But most of the time, we talk about how proud we are of our two vibrant, opinionated, strong, kind, brave and spectacularly original daughters, and how interesting family life becomes when we watch what young people make of their lives.
What About Me? The Diaries and Emails of a Menopausal Mother and her Teenage Daughter and What About Me, Too? by Kate Figes are published by Pan at £6.99
