When I was a college student, I looked forward to coming home for the holidays.

School food was good, but it wasn’t homemade by Mom. My room was comfy, but I had to share it with a roommate. My living quarters were clean, but they weren’t home.

Coming home meant I could impress my parents (and my sister) with how grown up I’d become. How I could set my own schedule and choose my own clothes without fear that someone, somewhere, might disapprove.  How I could drink a soda in the middle of the afternoon if I wanted, or stay up ’til the wee hours of the morning and sleep until noon.

But two days after I’d arrived home and seen everybody, I was ready to go back to campus. Back to my world. My life.

Because family was stifling me.

Mom, of course, wanted to fuss and worry over me — was I getting enough to eat, was I making friends. Daddy didn’t like my new independent streak; I was supposed to stay shy and fearful, I guess. And Sis pretended to hate me for leaving her, when what she really wanted was a chance to grow up and go away, too.

The family dynamics change when a young person goes off to college, especially if the teen goes far enough away to where she can’t come home on weekends. The teen, of necessity, becomes more of an adult, responsible for her own life, but the family still sees her as its little girl.

Conflicts are bound to arise.

This situation came home to roost for me earlier in the week.

Now that I’m the mom, I was looking forward to My Favorite Domer being home for the holidays. To fuss a bit over him. To make him special snacks. To buy him things he needed for school or play. To wash his laundry and iron his dress shirts.

But he wasn’t having any of it.

Just like his mom before him!

‘I’m tired of you hovering over me, trying to stuff food down my face,’ he told me one day.

Yikes, was I becoming my mother??

Has one of your mom’s traits popped up in you lately?