" Kleine Kinder Kleine Sorgen, Große Kinder Große Sorgen."

  Literal translation:  “Small children, small worries, big children, big worries.”

     “Kleine Kinder kleine Sorgen, große Kinder große Sorgen.”  Loosely translated: as your children grow, so do their problems.  My father said this so often, especially after the fourth time I crashed his car.  Until recent years, I never really comprehended the value of this German adage.  I remember one important moment in my early days of motherhood, sitting outside with my visiting neighbors.  I must have looked exhausted and spent, as I held my newborn.  My neighbor, a mother of three teenage girls, turned to me and said, “This is as easy as motherhood is ever going to be.”  I couldn’t believe she said that!  How could that be?  I was an exhausted slave to this tiny being who insisted on nursing for eight hours a day.  It had to get easier!

     My sons did not navigate their preschool and elementary years in typical fashion.
  Social and academic crisis were many, and seemed like the end of the world.   Evening routines were a struggle.  Disputes over, time allowed on the TV or video games, vs. homework, reading, or even playing outside, happened daily.  I still have notes my sons slid under my locked bedroom door, while I put myself in “time-out.”  One note my youngest wrote after I took a video game away stated the four reasons I should return him his game.  “Firstly, the game is my favorite.  Secondly, I may be the closest I’ll ever get to Final Fantasy VII.  Thirdly, it is fun.  And fourthly, because I love you.”  (Very proud of that comma placement.)  My oldest wrote me a note once, stating how he guessed I was a good mom, but I would be even better if I let him have more than one hour of media on school nights and how all his friends were allowed more than one hour.  These notes are still tucked away as a reminder of how simple things once were. 

     When parenting adults, you can’t take away a car from your twenty-one year old son when he gets rear ended on the way to his summer job, because you live in the boonies and it is the only way he can get to his job, or ground him when he calls frantic after work to say your Saturn Vue was stolen, only to find out that it was towed because he “unwittingly” parked it in a tow-away zone, (however you can make him pay the towing fee.).  You can’t drag your twenty-four year old home by his ears to live with you, when he calls with the news that a drunk driver hit his parked car outside his apartment in a questionable neighborhood.  You can encourage him to persevere and accept responsibility.  You can promise to have his back while he navigates through this world, offering advice, if asked, but anxious of the results.  You can convince him that he isn’t “bad luck” with cars.  You can tell him you understand why he wants to be out on his own and do things his way.  You can tell him you are proud of his Master’s degree and that he achieved it on his own or his continued success as an engineering student at a high-ranking university. 

     My sleepless nights are no longer the result of nursing, changing diapers, quieting fears of monsters, or loud music coming from bedrooms.  But, there are still sleepless nights and I don’t expect them to end.  Not as long as my sons continue to live their lives and make their own decisions.  Not as long as I trust them to remember what they have been taught. Not as long as I want them to make the most of this life.  Things never did get as easy as those first days of motherhood.  So if I could go back to that day with my newborn, I would tell myself what everyone did tell me.  Enjoy every moment and trust that there will be very difficult times and times of great joy and you are doing a great job because your sons turn out to be wonderful, caring human beings who are fun to be around!