It’s hard to let go. They come into the world completely helpless and then spend every day of their next twenty years or so pulling away from and against us. It’s what they’re meant to do. It’s a good thing. From the two year old’s infamous “no” to the teenager’s “I don’t need your help, I got this” they are testing themselves and learning how to fit into the world and society they live in. They are finding their way.
We love them so intensely and it can be hard to let them make mistakes. It hurts to hear them say they don’t want our attention. It breaks our hearts when our teenager walks head on into a storm of pressures and dangers that we can’t sweep out of the way. It has been this way forever. It’s nature’s perfect design to equip our children with the skills they need to be adults. What we can do is give them a strong foundation. We can align our words and our actions with our values and have high expectations of our children. Teach them right from wrong, empathy and kindness, and love them unconditionally. Then let them go build their own house on the foundation we’ve laid.
I often think of it this way: they’ll spend 20 or so years pulling away, but if we’ve got a solid foundation, they’ll spend the rest of our 40 or so years coming home.