Parenting Has to Change When Children Become Adults

A relationship can continue while the role inside it has to change.

Parenting makes this especially visible.

A young child legitimately depends on adults for protection, decisions, instruction, and practical care.

An adult child cannot be related to indefinitely as though that dependency has never changed.

The parent's care may remain.

The authority cannot remain in the same form.

Difficulty arises when love is confused with preserving the earlier role.

Advice becomes supervision.

Concern becomes control.

Experience becomes a reason the younger adult should not have to discover anything independently.

Letting go does not mean indifference.

It means allowing the relationship to reorganize around another person's adulthood.

The parent may become adviser, witness, resource, or teacher when invited.

The adult child also becomes someone from whom the parent can learn.

Completion here is not an ending of relationship.

It is an ending of a stage.

Care survives best when the old form is not forced to survive with it.