Wait what? Does it really say “best parenting advice from a plant“? Yup. Did you make some sort of typo? Nope. Is sleep deprivation finally turning you into an actual #crazyplantlady? Probably. Did you really get parenting advice from a plant? Well, kinda.

#crazyplantlady

Everyone that knows me, knows I love plants. My house is filled with house plants. Some I’ve had for ten years. I treasure them, I take care of them, I love them. They are my plant babies. Yes, dear readers, I am a Crazy Plant Lady. They bring me joy, comfort, oxygen, decoration and now, parenting advice.

Let me explain

This summer I bought a Bromeliad houseplant (a Bromeliaceae Aechmea to be specific). It bloomed for a good few months and, as Bromeliads do, it then lost its stunning pink flower and turned into a lovely, but regular house plant. And it had babies. Or ‘pups’ is what they are called, I believe. You can propagate the bromeliad pups by removing them from the mother plant. That way they can grow their own flower.

Great. Sounds quite easy right? Well, it is, unless you are a sappy mom-of-two with a big heart and breastfeeding hormones running through your system a.k.a me.

When the time comes

The best time to remove the pups from the mother plant is when they start to have roots of their own. But they shouldn’t be too rooted and big. About ten centimeters is probably the right size for the babies to be when they can move out of the mama pot and get their own digs.

Every time I looked at Mama Bromeliad and her two babies I thought, well, they seem to be doing fine, so I will just leave them together juuuuust a little bit longer. The pups were taking up quite a bit of space in the pot but mom didn’t really seem to mind. She had lost her flower, but she wasn’t dying. She was still green and full of life. Just a bit crowded. But I felt that just comes with the job description. Momlife equals no personal space. Deal with it Mama B.

And so the months passed and the babies got bigger and bigger. A couple of days ago I thought, okay: let’s do it. Let’s give these pups their own pot. They can all stand next to each other in matching pots and it will be fabulous.

(To) separate

It wasn’t fabulous. When I started the proces of removing the pups from the mother plant I quickly realized it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do so without killing them. I had waited too long. The babies had become almost as big as their mama and they had attached themselves to her core. I didn’t think I would be able to separate them from the mother plant with their roots in tact. And they need at least a little bit of their own root to be able to survive on their own.

Full potential

It’s fine. I put the mama and the not-so-babies-anymore in a bigger pot and they will live out their days there, together and well-loved by their crazy plant lady-mama. They will live. But chances are, they will not bloom. Because I waited too long, to give the pups their independence, I deprived them of the opportunity to fulfill their full potential. Even though I did it out of love, I didn’t do it right. I did that thing mothers tend to do: I smothered.

That post I wrote

A week or two ago I wrote a blogpost called “I say ‘be careful’ more often than I say ‘I love you’. So we all know I am a bit of a smothermother. But ey, I’ve got issues, but you’ve got ’em too. And fear is, next to an immeasurable amount of love, obviously a big part of why I have a hard time letting go. Also, my babies are 8 months and 3,5 years, so I feel I still have a bit of time to cultivate independence.

Nurture independence

But, as with the Bromeliad, if you wait too long and don’t nurture independence early on, your kids will not be able to reach their full potential. They will be fine, but they won’t bloom as they were intended to do. Because they will be afraid, they will not feel confident and they will not be able to use their own roots to become crazy beautiful fierce eccentric unique flowers.

It could still work

Let’s face it. I did a lot of projecting on my poor Bromeliad. It’s also quite possible I didn’t pull hard enough. I watched a couple of YouTube video’s (yess, you read that right, there are multiple video’s on the web, of people propagating Bromeliads. There is a whole squad of crazy plant ladies out there and I love them.). And you need to sever them quite brutally. I guess that’s appropriate, because that’s how it feels, every time you “let go” and give your child more independence: like a piece of you is literally being cut off.

Parenting Advice from a Bromeliad

So I may try again. Or I will let Mama B sit with her pups, as a reminder that even though I want to keep my babies close, I also want them to reach their full potential. I want them to bloom. I want them to, eventually, be able to grow their own roots and be strong independent women. Obviously I’d prefer it if they did that somewhere close, like I had in mind for my three identical pots on the window sill, but ultimately I just want them to feel happy and confident. My two beautiful pink flowers, Isaya and Alela.