What I learned about parenting from my 16-year-old son
He showed up for me in ways I wasn’t yet expecting
July 7, 2025
By Jennifer Keith, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying)
I don’t know why I found writing about the art of celebrating parenthood so mentally and emotionally demanding, but this creative experience has to be up there as one of my most challenging.
From the beginning, I just couldn’t find the right words to express all the things I wanted to say in a way that honoured the enormity of my feelings on the subject. There was an abundance of content to cover and so little I was willing to cut out, and I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere no matter how much time I spent working on it.
But I finally got it. I had finished the final edits and created a piece I felt really good about. Great actually. I felt like I had shared the right stories about the right people using the right words and I was very proud to submit the final product.
I had just put the last kid to bed and sat down to read my work once more before sending it off.
While as parents, we always strive to lead, there comes a time when our children shift from being dependents to being semi-independent beings who share in life with us.
“In that moment I felt something very new to me in my parenthood journey; I felt the overwhelming pride and comfort and joy that comes with seeing your kind, compassionate, loving child choosing to be a kind, compassionate, loving young adult.”
And there was nothing there.
Like at all.
I refreshed the page.
Nothing.
I tried opening it again.
Still nothing.
Not a single word.
Literally nothing but a title and an empty page.
Now I have no idea why I didn’t think to save a second copy of my work, but even as I sat viciously attacking my common sense, I assumed there must be some way to retrieve my masterpiece.
So I tried everything I knew to try. I literally reinvented the iPhone looking for a link to my story. When I couldn’t find it there, I moved on to dismantling my computer. I looked in every single folder on every device I owned. Twice. I shut things down and started them back up and fiddled with every setting in search of a solution. The only thing I put more energy into was berating myself for displacing something so important.
Mid-crisis, my 16-year-old son came downstairs and, seeing his distraught mother frantically hitting buttons, asked to help me. He listened as I tried to explain what happened. Then he calmly took my phone and began troubleshooting, pretending not to notice that I was struggling to hold it together.
I know he did everything to save my work (including consulting YouTube and his tech savviest friends) but the outcome was that my piece was gone.
Once we both stopped fruitlessly suggesting things to try and reality set in, my son asked me if I would be okay. I said I would be fine and thanked him for his help, then asked him to please go up to bed.
I was barely able to wait until he turned on our sound machine before sobbing. And I cried like it was my job for a good five minutes before wrapping my head around the facts and pulling myself together to deal with them.
A few minutes after that, the sound machine turned off. And my son asked me if I was ready for him to come back downstairs.
(Insert sentimental pause 🥹).
My son hadn’t gone to bed. He had given me space to work through my heavy emotions without an audience.
But he was still right there.
And he wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.
And in that moment I felt something very new to me in my parenthood journey; I felt the overwhelming pride and comfort and joy that comes with seeing your kind, compassionate, loving child choosing to be a kind, compassionate, loving young adult.
And I felt it to my very core.
We put on a show and didn’t talk about my lost work. There were a few moments when I let out a huge groan and my son gave me a look that said “I know, this is the worst,” but by the time we finished our episode, my breathing and heart rate were almost back to normal and I thought I just may survive this loss after all.
Before he went to bed, my son gave me a hug and said he was really sorry I had lost something so valuable … if he only knew what I gained in its place.
The next morning he got up early to show me how to work the “notes” app on my phone. He took time to explain the functions and made sure I could access the icon easily when I had a random flood of thoughts. He taught me how to save things automatically and how to locate things if they got misplaced. He reinforced the importance of back-ups and gave me some tips for editing. And never once did he shame me for needing the tutorial.
I can’t say I am a pro yet, but I certainly won’t be losing precious dissertations to draft folders anytime soon. And I won’t say I am over the weeks of work lost in translation — but I am okay. And I am sure I’ll write something I feel just as proud of again. In the meantime, I am revelling in a few unexpected gifts and lessons that came with a tough loss.
And while I can only assume my original blog would have been published and sold for millions of dollars had it not been lost to my technological ignorance, I do see that it was missing some insight; after weeks of meticulously choosing and editing the perfect words to describe the most meaningful gift a parent can receive, it wasn’t until I lost every last one of them that I gained a true understanding of what that gift actually was.
🥰
As families evolve, learning moments often highlight shifts in dynamics – and this can be emotionally triggering, especially when we have to replace familiar narratives and expectations with new ones.
But embracing change makes space for growth. Not just for our children, but for ourselves. As parents we feel like we have to be the teacher; a constant beacon guiding the way.
But we are always learning. And sometimes we don’t know the answers. And that is an important part of being a parent too.
I was so humbled by the lessons my son taught me while we managed my adult problem — while heartwarming, they also challenged a lot of my comfortable narratives, especially the ones suggesting my children’s naivety to my adult stresses. Parenting is as much about learning new things as it is about teaching them, and a willingness to view our experiences with a shifting lens helps to keep us balanced during each new stage.
Where I expected my blog to honour memories and moments of past celebrations, it became a tribute instead to unexpected gifts of the present. Where I wanted to highlight resilience, I instead showcased the moments of heartbreak that spark its existence, and reinforced the importance of giving space to experience the grief from curve balls that sometimes sneak into our perfectly laid out plans.
I’ve now learned that, while we always strive to lead, there comes a time when our children shift from being dependents to being semi-independent beings who share in life with us. And it’s okay for them to share in some of our sadness — sometimes it’s just as important to model how to experience hard things as it is to show how to recover from them.
Everwell understands how overwhelming and isolating the many moving parts of parenting can feel and how quickly changes happen. As life brings new challenges, there is support available to meet you wherever you are in your journey.
Reach out to us for a free consultation.