I slept on my teenage daughter’s bedroom floor last night.
It wasn’t a slumber party. It was the only thing I could do.
She’d gone to bed early, as she does on the rare nights she has that option. I had gone to bed early, too, but was awakened around ten by my mom radar—a sixth sense that almost never fails.
Sure enough, light and quiet sobbing were coming from her room. I walked in to find her sitting up in bed, an assigned-reading book from one of her classes open on her lap, tears streaming down her face.
She was crying because she couldn’t sleep. And she couldn’t sleep because she was so tired that the thought of needing rest made her anxious. Add in a typical teenage body clock that says, “Stay awake until midnight and sleep until ten!”, and the cycle was complete.
There was nothing I could do to fix it. She’d taken some medicine for a cold, so I couldn’t give her anything else. She’d tried all the mental games, all the relaxation tricks. She’d already attempted every distraction. The only thing left for me to offer was my presence.
So I made up a little bed on her soft, carpeted floor and told her I’d stay there in case she thought of anything else I could do. And there, on the floor beside her bed, we fell asleep.
This is what parenting big kids looks like. The older our children get, the more the things they need comfort from are beyond our control. When they feel lonely, we can’t set up playdates. When they struggle with homework, we often don’t understand it well enough to help. When their hearts break, we can’t—and shouldn’t—try to talk them into loving someone again. When they don’t get the job, the part, or the spot on the team, we can’t plead their case. Their challenges are internal, invisible, and sometimes unsolvable.
So we do what we can. We hover nearby, ready to offer our presence. Our phones are charged in case they want to text. We’re prepared for a midnight French-fry-and-milkshake run if hearts are hurt. We drive to campus to bring them home for a single night when they need the comfort of their own bed. We stay up in case they need to talk when they get home. We show up for games, performances, and ceremonies—even when they drive themselves there, stay past our departure, and barely glance our way in the stands. We make pancakes at ten p.m., or leave a sandwich in a tote with an ice pack to tide them over between activities.
We aren’t solving their problems. We aren’t doing their work. We aren’t fixing their friendships or romantic heartbreaks. But we are letting them know, in all these ways big and small, that they’re not alone. We worry with them, cry with them, hope with them, and cheer for them. We wait for moments to smooth the rough edges, to fill in gaps where we can. We are ready—on the phone, in the stands, in the car. And sometimes, on the floor.
