Parenting Is A Long Goodbye

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This episode is coming out on the day of my oldest son’s high school graduation. I’ve been thinking, writing and feeling a LOT of feelings lately. 

And some of what came out was a poem that I’d like to share with you, titled A Very Long Goodbye.

Parenting is an invitation
To a long walk
Along a path
With a person who
Slowly unveils themselves
To you.

This path leads you
Towards a threshold
Which ends at a doorway
On one side of the door is childhood
On the other is adulthood

For most of the path
You walk in front
Your child walks behind
You’re the leader
They’re the follower 

For a short time 
You walk beside each other
We call this ‘being a teenager’

Then one day
You arrive at the threshold
You step aside
They open the door
They walk through

They’re in the front now
It’s their path
If you're lucky 
They invite you to 
Keep walking with them

Parenting is a very long hello
Parenting is a very long goodbye

My son is about to arrive at the threshold. We’ve been walking this path together for a really long time, and our relationship is about to change. If you are also in this place of transition, this episode is for you.

Preparing Your Child for Adulthood

I like to think about what it means to be an adult as having all the freedom and all the responsibility at the same time.

When kids are little, they don’t have a lot of freedom or responsibility. You have the power and you are taking care of them.

As you parent your kids, you’re teaching them how to be responsible - with their bodies, their physical wellbeing, their social life, their finances and a ton of other practical things.

And as they learn, you slowly give them pieces of freedom. The two are tethered together.

As freedom increases, responsibility also increases. 

When we are parenting a child, we have a lot of control over their environment and circumstances. In the teen years, we start to lose a lot of this control. They begin to make more of their own decisions about what they do and how they show up in the world. 

I like to challenge parents instead of doubling down on trying to regain that control, double down on the relationship with your child. Get to know who they are becoming. That connection is what will be left when they walk through that threshold from childhood to adulthood.

The End of Parenting

Parenting is a verb. It is the actions we take when we’re raising our kids. The things we do in order to help them learn to handle the responsibility of being an adult. 

We teach our kids with the idea that someday they won’t need us anymore. Ultimately, you should parent yourself out of a job.

Parents sometimes forget that their job of parenting ends when their child becomes an adult. And I think it’s because we confuse the role of parent with the responsibility for parenting.

Adults don’t parent other adults. Soon, life will give consequences to my son, not me.

The tasks of parenting will end. Being a parent will not.

I am a mom. You are a mom. That relationship we have with our kids doesn’t end, even though the act of parenting does.

What Comes Next

I sometimes think about being a mom as being invited to be in the front row, the best seat in the house, to the best show on earth, which is your kid's life. It's a privilege, it's an honor. 

And I don't know about you, but I want to continue to have that front row view. We're going to keep showing up. We're going to keep inviting them in.

It's so easy as a parent to see all the areas that our kid isn't performing well or showing up in a good way. But if your adult kid feels like every time they're around you that you're just parenting and teaching and pointing out stuff, it will feel kind of bad. They don’t want to be scrutinized.

They want to be in a relationship with someone who's delighted by them and sees their strengths and all the ways that they are good.

My goal for you is that your kid grows up, and they want to be in a relationship with you because that relationship feels so safe. They feel seen and understood. You unconditionally love and accept who they are.

When everything is said and done, when they walk through that threshold and they step onto the path of their own life, what’s left is the relationship.

Cheers to all of you parents going through transitions right now. I’m in it with you. I’m here for you.

You’ll Learn:

• The relationship between freedom and responsibility
• The difference between parenting and being a parent
• My ultimate goal for you and your kids

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