- My adult daughter told me she didn’t want to hear my advice anymore, setting a boundary.
- I was impressed with her ability to set boundaries, and she has always been emotionally mature.
- I’m jealous of her ability to do that, but she is an inspiration to me.
“Mom, I’m going to give you an update on my life, but I don’t want your advice because I won’t take it anyway.”
My daughter effortlessly stated her well-articulated boundaries to me as she hopped in the car. I kind of laughed as I eagerly awaited the juicy details of her life as a confident, 21-year-old college student-athlete.
Molly told me all about her friends, the hockey team, and her classes. She disclosed her desire to study abroad and her newfound love of Irish music, and of course, she dished any boy drama (or lack thereof) as always. I listened. We laughed.
At the end of our conversation, her brave boundary-setting request was a success. She made something so hard, like setting a boundary, look and feel so damn easy. That’s when I realized I was envious of her.
My daughter often stepped up into the adult role
I often joke that my oldest daughter, Molly, was born an adult. From the moment she was born, she has been teaching me how to be a better person. For most of the years that she’s been alive, she has been taking care of me.
At first, I was an active alcoholic who could hardly take care of herself — let alone her children. When I finally did get sober and didn’t really know how to live without alcohol, Molly taught me.
She doesn’t know it and maybe she wasn’t trying to, but she made the things that felt so hard to me look so easy.
When her parents split and life changed from one house to two, she became a second parent to her siblings in both homes; she simply stepped up. Too much has fallen on her shoulders, yet she never wavers.
She is calm in the chaos — always. She is loving and patient — always. She is a leader — our leader — and we lean on her (even though we shouldn’t). Molly has always made everything look easy despite the fact that nothing in her life has ever truly been that. For as long as I can remember, I have looked up to her.
Now she’s taking steps I am too afraid to take
“I don’t want your advice.” She said it with a smile, a pep, and well-deserved pride. She didn’t say it rudely. I didn’t feel rejected or less than, but I did feel jealous.
It wasn’t the first time I wished I could be more like Molly, but this time, it was so much more poignant. I wondered: How is it that my daughter has mastered the challenge of setting boundaries and I haven’t? How had Molly learned this valuable lesson at such a young age? And how did she execute it so beautifully?
I have been struggling with this my entire life — so much so that I typically sacrifice my own wants and needs to avoid boundaries altogether, and that leads to resentment and anger, and whatever is the opposite of peace.
The jealousy factor pops up a lot these days. Both of my young adult daughters have their lives ahead of them, and I’m at the point in life where I’m starting to look back. When I do, I realize that I have spent so much time being my own worst enemy because I am not comfortable doing what Molly did. I people-please first, avoid discomfort, and fear rejection.
I feel jealous of my daughter, and I don’t think that is a bad thing
Jealousy often has a negative connotation, but I know that the word also has roots in the word zēlos, which means zeal. It is associated with words such as emulation, devotion, or ardor. This is what I often feel for Molly — love, devotion, and a desire to emulate her.
She shows me who I want to be — maybe who I wish I had become sooner.
When your kids are little, people always warn you about how quickly they grow up, but no one ever mentions how beautiful it is when that does happen.
When our kids are young, we can be struck by how they want to be just like us, but we don’t usually talk about how we might want to be more like them. We don’t talk about jealousy, but maybe we should. Maybe parenting adults evokes jealousy — jealousy in the more ancient sense of the term. And maybe this is the gift and beauty of parenting adult children: They show us who we want to be.
