TOO CLOSE TO YOUR KIDS?

This may seem like a crazy question--or one you think refers to a really crazy situation--but it's a good area of debate. How close is too close? Kids need parents, no question about it. They need reliable, attentive, concerned parents who watch out for them when they're little and stay up with them in the night when they're sick.

They don't need to have to take care of you, their parents, when they're little themselves. Too many kids watch out for themselves because their parents are alcoholic, distracted by other relationships, emotionally disturbed, workoholic or drug addicted. This is all bad for kids because they don't have loving adults watching out for them. They feel they need to protect their parents and while kids are generally concerned for the ones they love, they don't need to be the adults in their parenting relationships.

But can they be too close to their parents?

Most parents don't worry about this. They have lots of other things to be concerned about, but there comes a point in kids' lives that they may need to distance themselves from their parents and this generally comes before their parents think they're ready to fly on their own.

So, what's to do? New research indicates that the human brain doesn't fully mature until individuals are around 25. This is much older than we'd previously thought. Before our society as viewed adulthood as coming at age 18. After this kids are automatically tried as adults for crimes, they're considered legally responsible for themselves and we let them enlist for military service at this age.

Are we sending children off to war?

Anyone who's parented an adolescent knows the complicated relationship that usually develops around this developmental stage. If you've had a generally uncomplicated parenting experience, the teenage years can come as a shock. Let's make it clear that not all people go through the same experiences in the same order. We're just talking about generalities. Most kids deal with needing to/wanting to create their own lives as they hit the high school years.

They enter into intimate relationships, seriously begin thinking about how they're going to live their adult lives and generally start keeping secrets from their parents. They may have always done this last part, but as kids get older they become more and more aware of being separate people. Individuals. They have their own opinions and want to make their own choices.

Some of those choices scare the bejeezus out of their loving parents.

What parent of a young adult hasn't worried about their financial choices? I know my husband and I are concerned about this, but at what age to you stop voicing those concerns? When is it really none of your business?

I've talked to parents of 35 year-old children who are still doing their kids dirty work, still cleaning up after them. Most individuals don't want this, either as a parent or as an adult child. So when do parents stop helping?

The transition from child to adult is a little like crawling from a ladder to a roof top--there's a scary moment when really bad things can happen, when you can lose your balance and end up in a bad way. We parents are very aware of the possibilities. Heck, we know our own mistakes and we want very much to warn our kids, to help them not make the same mistakes we made.

The closer the relationship, the more we want to be helpful. Maybe the issue is our closeness, maybe we need to look at the nature of closeness, of helping our kids. I realized as my own daughters began this shift that my comments and cautions weren't all that welcomed. As a matter of fact, they didn't want to hear what I thought of their relationship choices or how they spent their money.

At that point--after much gnashing of teeth and weltering in self-pity--I realized that the toughest, most loving thing we do for our children is...believing in them. Trust me, I know how hard this is to do when they're making bad, bad choices. Frankly, there were moments when I struggled, thinking I thought they were smarter than this. But perspective and much thinking about this helped Roger and I realize that our kids are intelligent beings. That may sound silly to say, but they are smart. Certainly intelligent enough to figure this adult thing out. They might make relationship/career/money mistakes, but don't we all at times?

The really smart part is when we learn from our mistakes. That's what it means to be close to our children. Letting them benefit from their own choices(mistakes). Letting them learn without rescuing them...and then preaching at them. Its understandably hard not to preach. Sometimes really, really hard. But it's do-able.

Love them and believe in them enough to stay out of the way when it's appropriate to stay out of the way. They're smart. They'll figure it out. Yes, you'll hurt while you watch them struggle. You'll want to rush in to take away the hurt. But remember, if you do that, you're taking away some of the learning, too.