Joanna Fortune: My 15-year-old is going away on holidays with her friend's family

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Last week, our eldest child, who is 15, told us she wants to go on holiday with her best friend’s family instead of with us. I’m delighted for her, but up until now we’ve always gone away together as a family. Also, she gets on very well with her two younger sisters, who look up to her. It feels like the beginning of the end for our tight-knit clan.

As I read and reread your letter, I found myself experiencing that conflict so many of us will feel as parents as our children go through adolescence.

We can be happy that they are happy, healthy, independent and have strong social bonds and connections outside of us, while also lamenting how family becomes less of a priority for them as they pull towards their peer connections and the outside world.

Add to this that she is your eldest, so this is a first for both of you.

Her decision to go on holiday with another family instead of her own is not just hers to make; parents in both families need to agree it’s a good idea. It sounds as though you are on board with her taking this leap and are processing what your own family holiday will feel like without her being there.

I wonder whether you have told her about what you are going through. Not in a tone that makes her feel bad for wanting to go away with her friend, but in a gentle and warm tone that simply lets her know that she will be missed, and her absence changes your family holiday for the rest of you.

The last line of your letter stands out for the depth of its emotional tone: “It feels like the beginning of the end for our tight-knit clan”.

I’m sorry that you are feeling this way. You are at the start of a significant transition that should not be dismissed or minimised.

I recently watched a video on social media that resonated with me. Two female podcasters were reading a letter about the story our kids will tell about us when they are grown up.

It starts with the line, “Someday your child will describe their childhood to someone you’ve never met…and they’ll tell them a story about what it was like to grow up in your house”.

Many of us share aspects of our childhoods with people who only know us as adults, who didn’t know us growing up, and often, the aspects that we share are the quieter parts of our childhoods that linger.

These could be feelings associated with the memory of sharing dinner as a family, of walking through our front doors, of laughing and crying together, of the times we played, what we played, and of the songs sung to us that we now sing to our own.

In supporting your daughter in having a new experience of trying something familiar (a family holiday) from a fresh perspective (because it’s with a friend’s family), you are giving her space to write something new into the story of her adolescence.

Stay connected with her via messages or phone calls, and remember she is coming home to you, where she will share the story of this experience.

Perhaps what you are experiencing is about your family life evolving more than ending.

• If you have a question for child psychotherapist Dr Joanna Fortune, please send it to [e-mail]