They Leave and Cleave: Mothering Adult Children

By Terry Trimble Sims

The job of parenthood involves no interview process. There are no applications to file and no requirements to meet. Babies come without warnings or instructions. No one sets out a job description for usexcept for perhaps our mothers, who want grandchildren in the worst way. Parenting is a learning process that requires great care and patience.

In They Leave and Cleave, author Terry Trimble Sims offers prayerful, biblical, and practical advice on mothering adult children. Using experiences and memories from raising three children of her own and fostering other children, Sims presents an honest look at motherhood and what it really means as the children become adults.

Sims shares a host of sentiments about motherhood from the perspective of a mother longing to bless her children as they grow, leave home, marry, and have families of their own. They Leave and Cleave helps mothers as they cultivate loving and healthy relationships with their children as they transition to adulthood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781512700626

Terry Trimble Sims

Terry Trimble Sims and her husband, John, lived in Sparta, Tennessee, for forty years. She raised three children and with her husband started the Young Life ministry in the Upper Cumberlands. They were active leaders most of their lives. Sims went to be with the Lord in December 2008, achieving her ultimate life’s goal.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 Terry Trimble Sims.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. The Living Bible, TLB, and the The Living Bible logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-9542-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-0062-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015914568

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/28/2015

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1   Acquiring The Mother-Button

Chapter 2   Mother-Button Crisis

Chapter 3   Mother-Button Modifications

Chapter 4   Dimming the Incessant Flashing!

Chapter 5   Surveying the Effects

Chapter 6   Reprograming the Mother-Button

Chapter 7   Keeping the Mother-Button in Check

Chapter 8   Dimming the Mother Button

Chapter 9   The Discerning Mother-Button

Chapter 10   The Appropriate Mother-Button

Is my Mother Button Flashing?

(Mothering Adult Children)

INTRODUCTION

Knowing when to retire from one’s life’s work is easier for some people than for others. For me, the appropriate age and stage have arrived, but I am having a problem. I am stuck fast in the job I have had for most of my life partly because I don’t want to quit and partly because I don’t know how.

A nice clean break is what I need, but I have had no good-bye lunches with co-workers nor have I received any letters of thanks or commendation. My personal belongings remain where they’ve always been and no replacement has been hired. No one has told me, Thanks for past service. Your job is being done away with; you are no longer needed here.

I’ve had no explicit instruction that, while yesterday I may have had a job to do; today I can sleep in. My services are no longer needed. So I show up every morning as I always have and find little work is shuffled my way. A confusing situation to say the least.

My life’s work has been wife and mother to three children and an assortment of foster children, and my office was my home. With my youngest child now aged thirty-five, my retirement is overdue. But the break is hard to make when I am still living at the office. The old chair in the den has been re-upholstered, but it’s the same old chair that held presents too large to go into the Christmas stockings many years ago.

Other minor changes have been made, but Jack’s room, Eleanor’s room, and Scott’s room are still down the hall. My ‘co-workers’ call periodically but no one has mentioned to me that my department has been phased out. My mother-heart shows up for work regularly. My maternal instincts, which my children fondly call ‘her mother button,’ are still in place; I’m just not sure what is appropriate anymore.

The Bible study I attend on Tuesday morning has helped to open my eyes. Several of the young women have small children and they frequently share their struggles to be godly wives and mothers.

Like the retired doctor who happens upon an accident and remembers instinctively what to do, my latent mother-button begins flashing with wisdom as I listen to the latest crises of these young mothers. I am taken back to the years when I faced many of the same struggles myself. As my young friends explore ways to deal with their problems, I catch glimpses into the lives of my own grown children, seeing reflections of myself and my interactions with them, their spouses, and their children. I begin to see their lives from their perspective. I see myself from their perspective!

Now in my sixties, with three children, ages thirty-five to forty-one I have never been able to shake completely the feeling that I am first and foremost a mother, even though my youngest child has been gone from home for sixteen years. My nest may look empty to the casual eye, but to my thinking, it has merely gotten fuller as the in-law children and grandchildren have arrived. My happiest moments are family-together moments. I’d rather spend time with my children than with anyone I know.

It wasn’t always so. Little children and the problems of adjusting to marriage were stressful for me just as they are for my young Bible study friends. Pressures come at them from many directions. Yet the women who ought to be their strongest supporters, their mothers and mothers-in-law, are stressing their marriages instead. These young women share many positive things about the mothers in their lives, of course, but a lot of what I hear scares me.

The women who so long protected and provided for their daughters don’t seem to grasp that the hierarchy is no longer in place. Mother is no longer to be checked in with or pleased; her daughter is now her equal.

Occasionally, my women friends share troubling episodes that sound fairly mundane to me, yet they are creating great crises for these young families. Sometimes the words and actions of their mothers and mothers-in-law seem so grievous I wonder that their adult children sustain any relationship with them at all.

Calling on old memories, I have sympathized with their stories and have even tried to explain a mother’s reasons or reactions to her daughter, but I have found myself wondering, How do my own daughter and daughters-in law feel about me? Are they, in turn, shaking their heads over the way I deal with them? How am I harming their relationships with me, or worse, harming their marriages? Every strained situation I’ve ever had with them has come to mind; I’ve never been in the running for ‘Mother of the Year,’ but I felt I was blending pretty happily into their lives.

A wise woman builds her house, but the

foolish tears it down with her own hands.

Proverbs 14:1

I want to be a wise mother who builds her house; one who nurtures healthy relationships with her adult children. But how? There are no perfect parents, and certainly, no perfect parents-in-law, I console myself. I must be in the top half of the mother-spectrum. Surely!

That takes some of the pressure off. I may not be doing it perfectly, but then who is? My own mother wasn’t a 10 in the ‘Mother Department.’ And while my mother-in-law was a 10 in my eyes, she rated only a 4 or 5 in the eyes of some of her other children. Same precious woman, differing perceptions. And perception is everything. Who am I in my children’s eyes? How could I know their true feelings about me? It matters little how I see myself!

Realizing how much frustration, anger, and alienation are caused by the way we mothers deal with our adult children, I began looking for the book that would tell me how to do the mother-thing well, or at least set out some minimum standards. Having worked for more than 20 years on the frustrating job of parenting little ones, I didn’t want to blow it now that they were grown…now that I had a chance to enjoy them as delightful adults.

A hundred strategies for raising little children float around our culture. Most parents have read at least one book or magazine article on what to do with a toddler and when to do it. But who has read a book on what to do when your child has children of his own? Who has written the book that spells out the privileges and duties of a mother when there’s an in-law child involved in the mix? I needed the book!

Sweet relationships with my married children, both flesh and blood and the in-law variety, seemed entirely too important to leave to the off-chance that I would get it right. Listening to my young married friends, I also realized that poor parental input can add great stress to fledgling marriages. I wanted a clear view of myself in the