We’ve all been there and should know the routine by heart.

1. The door slam.  This marks the opening of the ritual and is often triggered by a simple remark or apparently reasonable request.

2. The stomp, carefully designed over the years to betray the laws of physics and produce a pounding, reverberating, echo that hardly seems possible from a girl so small.  It is also designed to alert the neighbours that ‘life is totally and utterly unfair’.

3. The tears.  Like taps, they are turned on and off at will.  Their intended effect is to evoke an overwhelming sense of guilt.

4. The sulk.  All of the above is but a precursor to the long, lingering, stinking atmosphere that teenagers can create.  War has been declared and the strategy is clear: victory by attrition.

It’s a long way from those giddy first days as a parent, where life was a rainbow of pastel blues, pinks and first smiles.  The photos, kept carefully in my bottom drawer, remind me of simpler days, charged with the wonder of first birthdays, first steps and first days at school.

It was easier back then.

Or was it?  The more I think about it, the more I suspect that we have developed the human capacity as parents to overlook a long, dark and painful shadow on the experience of bringing new life into the world.  We have learned to ignore the price we have to pay for those ‘magic’ moments.

And it is all to do with a kind of dying or letting go.

From the moment they are born, the notion that our children belong to us is challenged.  We spend years trying to manage their growing independence, wrestling consciously or unconsciously with the paradox that what came from us is not us, but a unique, emerging adult who may not see the world as we do or follow the path we have trod. 

It is not so obvious at first.  Wrapped up in blankets and oodles of love and cuddles, you could be forgiven for thinking that your children will always be a part of you.  After all, they rarely leave the safe embrace of our arms and there are plenty of opportunities to reaffirm the deep physical connection between our life and theirs.

It begins quietly with things that only half matter - choosing what they want to wear, what vegetables they want to eat and what football team they will support.

And then one day you turn around and they are living out a totally different story where parents, at best, are only playing a supporting role.

We tell our friends that we feel so ‘out of touch’ with our teenage children.  And maybe, here, this is exactly right because one of the most obvious outward signs of this natural, heart-wrenching process has to do with our struggle to literally keep in touch with those we love the most.

As Tony Parsons, in his most recent novel, so eloquently explains:

“When they are babies you can revel in them, you can kiss their cheek as hard as you dare and get drunk on their smell and the velveteen sheen of their skin.  When your children are babies, you can get stoned on the incredible living fact of their living.  Then it all changes as they grow.  You hold them.  And then one day you realise you have stopped holding them… by the time they are in their teens, you can let years drift by without really touching them.  The physical expression of your love – the hugs, the kisses, the way you are allowed to touch their hair – all disappears.“ (Starting Over)

Families, thank God, are not what are shown in films or even what we dare to post to our Facebook profiles.  They are messy, complex organizations of people learning to understand their dependence upon one another – whilst also affirming their ultimate independence.

Families, on some days, really are zones of war.

But I, for one, am resolved to stay in touch for as long as I can and keep my fingers crossed for the rest.