I have asked my 18yo son repeatedly to sit and watch a movie with me, to no avail. I demanded he go for a walk with me and his sister yesterday. He did and it was really nice. It was the most time I'd spent with him in months.
He's a lovely boy in so many ways. I've had lots of hugs, but he's doing VCE, experiencing love dramas and is so all up in his own head like teenagers often are. I wish he'd cared more and expressed it to me but I don't know how to make that happen.
As a parent I am conflicted between sharing with my kids what I'm going through and protecting them from it. It's rather more challenging when it comes to the youngest two as their mother died from it two years ago this month.
We are a loving family, and we demonstrate it. How much is nature and how much is nurture? That I feel my kids have let me down a bit from time to time, or all the time, makes me feel like a failure.