We plunked down on the grass and watched the children experiment with this new setting, this new freedom, hesitant, not quite sure they wanted to leave my side. Bolting upright once more and brushing off my skirt I said to my husband, “Watch this,” then proceeded to walk an exaggerated figure eight, the kids following behind in perfect order, completely unaware they were performing a circus trick.

Yes, I was a mother duck and they were my ducklings, imprinted on me, I thought, for life. I stopped short causing the children, like little dominoes, to come up smack against each other, thump, thump, thump. My husband laughed so hard, he held his sides and rolled back over onto the grass. This broke up our duck walk as the kids ran over to explore this new game called Climb All Over Daddy.

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We like to remember that time, before there were 12 of them. When there were just five or six of them. When they loved us no-holds-barred.

Most of them are now grown with kids of their own and from time to time, they know better than I about most things and certainly life and parenting. Convinced as they are of their superiority, they will lecture me, or perhaps stop speaking to me for some time, forgetting they were once imprinted on me like the little ducklings they were. They don’t remember that episode in the park or how they adored me as infants, gazing into my eyes with concentrated love as they nursed, or planting wet and sloppy kisses on my cheek.

Sometimes I can’t sleep at night for the hurt. The way their adult words cut deep into my heart, though I know it’s just a phase of their growing up, learning how to be. My tossing and turning will awaken my husband and he’ll know. He’ll whisper, “IDEAL.”

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It’s an acronym I taught him. IDEAL is the five stages of the father-son relationship according to psychologist Charles Williams. IDEAL stands for idolize, discord, evolving, acceptance, and legacy, and corresponds to a child’s age, from childhood to adolescence, young adulthood to middle age, and fully mature. It’s so true this acronym, that my husband and I have referred to it often as we watch our children grow. (Somewhat contrary to Williams’ theory, we find IDEAL holds true for all our children, irrespective of gender and parent.)

IDEAL as a concept is a deft illustration of how they, the children, weave in and out of their love for us. In the beginning, as infants and small children, there is that total, focused adoration. Then they hit their teens and rebel, flouting parental authority and rejecting our values, experimenting with any philosophy at loggerheads with our own. Next up: self-important young adults eager to impose some distance between them and us as they find their own way about things, rejecting our way.

IDEAL, the acronym, is something we reach back for to comfort us in our hurt as we watch our adult children turn away from us. We hold onto to the acronym because it means they’ll come back, a little apologetic, more kind, more understanding. It tells us that this turning away is a phase. It says something about them and not about us.

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IDEAL speaks both to the impetuousness of teens and the ignorance of young adulthood. It reminds us we’ve done as well as most parents, and that someday, they’ll find themselves in our shoes, with a young adult child holding the quality of their parenting askance, pointing a finger at them and saying, “J’accuse!”

We hurt in advance for them, in the face of this as-not-yet insult to their parental prowess.

The accusations of bad or insufficient parenting? That is the worst of it. It is what keeps me awake at night, though not my husband. He knows they’ll come back to us.

He’s right about that. They always do.

I, on the other hand, can never remember the end game when I’m in the thick of it, in the white hot pain of their evolution. The not remembering all the things I did for them large and small. And I will lie awake defending myself in silence, as the litany of all my parental deeds, both large and small, passes through my mind:

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I did housework as they slept, in order to spend quality time with them when they were awake.

I took them to the park each afternoon, pushing them (and their friends) on swings for hours.

I read bedtime stories to them each night.

I cooked fresh, hot, gourmet meals for them, every day, baking my own bread and cakes.

I made fancy birthday cakes for them.

I made memorable birthday parties for them each year, all of them, every year.

I kept their heads clean from lice, their nails clipped, their clothes spotless.

I prompted them to say their blessings at mealtime, their prayers at night.

I made sure they did their homework.

I kissed their boo boos.

I had them vaccinated, never deviating from the schedule.

I breastfed every last one of them.

I never missed a parent-teacher meeting or a school play.

I listened to their woes and I hurt for their hurts.

I celebrated their successes and worked to offer meaningful praise.

All these things I would tell my children, remind them, if only they would listen, if only they cared. Which they don’t. Not now. Not while they’re evolving.

Each night, the bulleted list of my maternal defense grows until I am fairly shining with parental virtue. But it doesn’t wave the hurt of their repudiation away. Because that list is like the tree falling in the forest, with no one to hear.

After what seems like a time that will never end, the children do return to us. They come back, fully evolved, they remember us then in a gentler fashion and realize we are bound together forever. They recall some of what we did for them if not all of it, one daughter going so far as to say to me with some chagrin, as if she somehow fell short, “Eema, you worked hard.”

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At that point, they know. They know what it’s like with their own kids. They forgive me. They accept us.

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We have experienced four out of these five stages of IDEAL with our children. The legacy period is off in the distance, but we have no doubt it will follow in good time. That is the cycle and the way of things. We see it in ourselves now, the honor and courtesy we extend our elderly parents, our wish to emulate them.

It will yet happen when they are our own age, settled and more mature, their pockets jammed full of life experience. They will be our legacy. A legacy to the pain and love of having and raising children. A sort of wild scribbling that cannot be confined within the lines.

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Some days it seems too hard. But you wouldn’t want to do without those other days. Those days when they are absolutely yours, imprinted with all you poured into them. Fully evolved, they stand as a reverberation of your values, sending mini-you ripples out into the world.

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And that’s when you realize you were duped. All this time you thought they were ducklings. But as it turns out, they were swans.

Varda Meyers Epstein is a mother of 12 and contributing editor at the Kars4Kids educational blog for parents. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Tablet and Kveller. Find her on Facebook, Twitter @epavard and LinkedIn.

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