Sometimes I Feel Like a Piece of Bologna

Parenting Kidults

Phyllis Goldberg and Rosemary Lichtman offer some great advice to parents whose kidadults who have headed off to college in “How to Lay Low as Helicopter Parents.” Contrary to their advice, we remained quite involved with him during his college years. But we also gave him a lot of freedom and a lot of encouragement. We were available to listen and to reflect and suggest, but tried not to mandate. We got to know his friends, and had wonderful hour-plus weekly conversations with him. We often felt we were walking a tightrope.

Boy, in my opinion, there’s nothing harder than parenting adult children! Knowing when to step in and when to shut up is far tougher than dealing with a screaming two-year old or a moody teenager. We’ve been incredibly blessed with the relationship we’ve been able to maintain with our adult son. He’s a delightful young man who seems to have forgiven us and continues to forgive us when we overstep. It took most of his college years for us to really let go, but now we feel as if we have a pretty good adult-to-adult relationship. I hope he feels the same.
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Labels: adult children