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Seeking Optimum

The idea of effective mental age is something I continued to mull to see if it helped explain some of the challenges I have experienced being the mother of J as an adult. In my specific situation, J grew up to be a calm, composed and mature young lady - nothing like the toddler or child version of who she was. Though to be fair she was never a difficult kid. I might have mellowed some with age but can't be sure the change in me is commensurate or proportional to the change in her. So when we get together on occasion, the family unit seeks the previously established mental age setting at first. We both discover, that does not work for either of us. At that point there might be some automatic recalibration that happens and we come to the age that is now closer to the the midpoint - not skewed her way or mine.

For some reason, this particular age that now are as a unit is not comfortable for either of us and expectations are not met. The way we seemed to have dealt with it thus far is to take some time apart, continue to communicate and try meeting again after a while to see if anything changes. If my understanding of the effective mental age is anywhere near accurate, then this process will not yield the results we expect atleast not quickly. One of the two sides would need to go through a transformative life experience that resets the effective mental age of the unit at a level very far away from where it is right now. Some transformation can be self-directed, specially if there are things about me that are not serving the relationship well and needs change. Reading Mother Hunger offered me some insights into that question - so much left to learn about being a mother and my child has been an adult for a few years already

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