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“They leave before they leave.”
Part of an occasional series about phrases that this therapist finds himself repeating, often.
As a clinician in private practice, one of the phrases that I frequently hear myself saying to parents of older children and adolescents is this: “They leave before they leave.” While we often focus on the “big” separations between parents and children such as leaving home, I am often reminded that there are lots of little separations along the way.
As with most issues in therapy, but also in life, there is not a simple either/or, all or nothing. Leaving home is a long, slow process.
Although it starts with small separations, as they age there is less and less time at home, more time with activities, with work, and with friends. They are leaving us.
They were always leaving us, and that is their purpose.
If you are a parent, you may think back to what may have been the first big separation for you: kindergarten. For our local school, the staff would take all of us into a room together and read The Kissing Hand. Yes, of course, there were tears. But the book puts forth a sort of “both/and” scenario: you are…
