LETTING GO OF THE KID

At the risk of being called a hypocrite, I'm advocating allowing your kids to make their own lives. Lots of high school students are furiously writing college entrance essays and making themselves sick, worrying about what they'll do now that they're entering adulthood. Then there are the slackers who seem more interested in partying and going to school football games than college--the ones whose parents have to stay on them to even get the kids to go to school.

Either way, you've got to let your kids go.

You have to find a mid-range zone that conveys love and emotional support--maybe financial support while they're actually going to college--without sliding into an over-involvement that earns you the scornful term of "helicopter parent." This mid-range area is dicey and slippery and really hard to maintain (voice of experience). You don't get to tell them how to dress or what jobs they should go after or who to date. They need to find all this out themselves.

Your kids have the right to live the lives they choose. This can be a painful and scary reality, even more so when some people persist in thinking parenting equals outcome. It doesn't. Kids have choice, no matter what kind of parent you've been. They get to be healthy or unhealthy, law abiding or not. That's what this country is about, right? Having a choice. While many of us struggle with this when it comes to our kids, this freedom applies to them, too.

I mention the hypocrite thing because my husband commented the other day that we've participated in eight different moves on our children's part (admittedly him more than me). And my daughters are both still in school, pursuing advanced degrees, so they'll have more moves to go before they're settled. Roger says he's not too sure how many moves he has left in him, but they'll need him and he'll go.

That's the bottom line--when you love the kids, you go. The complicated part is in deciding when it's important for the child to make her own way. When to step back and let the consequences fall. When is it more loving to believe in her? To believe she can make it on her own, even if she is struggling.

There will be times you bite your tongue and don't comment. You've had practice in this. All through adolescence, your kids tried on different behaviors like different hairstyles and, while some work, others didn't.

The older the child gets, the less place there is for your comments. (yes, even if she gets a nose ring.)

One of the biggest challenges in parenting is allowing your children to experience the consequences of their own choices. How do any of us learn, if we don't see the results of our actions?

So, you need to let go of your kid...gradually. This is like when you were teaching your child to ride a bike. You ran alongside, balancing the child while she peddled furiously. Then, when she had the hang of it, you took your hand off and stood, watching her ride away.

These are the bittersweet moments, particularly when the child realizes you're not balancing her anymore and she falls over, startled and scared to be on her own. Lots of parents cavil at this, commenting that their children aren't acting like adults. Still, you have to butt out and let them have the consequences of their choices.

This is what life is about. We parents shelter them from the cold, feed them when they're young and help them learn how to make it without us...because they need this. They need to be okay without us. They need to grow up because we're not going to always be here.

Lots of people say these things about "responsibility" to their children--sometimes over and over until the kid starts mockingly mouthing the words behind their parents' back when they're speaking--but the hard part is following through and actually taking your hand off the bike.