As children grow, parents need to step into their world

She handed the book to me the way you present someone with a gift, and I guess it was a gift of sorts.

My 18-year-old niece, Abby, had been visiting for Easter weekend, and before leaving she’d asked me if I wanted to borrow her signed copy of “The Fault in Our Stars,” by John Green.

I could feel that this was more than, “Hey — I think you’d like this book.” Rather, the look on her face said, “If you want to know me better, read this, because it is my most favorite book in the whole wide world.”

Green pulled me in with a vulnerable, heartbreaking story that made me both laugh out loud and cry, and my niece was right — I did come to know her better. We had our own unofficial book club (via messaging on Facebook), and the best part was hearing why the book meant so much to her. And I think she also came to know me better through our discussion.

In the last several months, I have read my share of young adult literature. I read my 11-year-old daughter’s favorite book, “Wonderstruck,” by Brian Selznick (also the author of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”). In this brilliant book, Selznick tells two stories, one with words and the other with pictures (all original artwork by Selznick), and then weaves the two stories together in a way that can only be described as genius. And again, it was more than just a good read. It was an opportunity to connect with my soon-to-be sixth-grader.

The trilogy came next. I’m talking about “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins. My husband and I watched as our 13-year-old daughter devoured all three books in less than a week, and once we started reading them we couldn’t put them down either. Naturally, I attended the midnight premiere of the movie several weeks later, and in that theater, surrounded by a multitude of Peeta-loving teenage girls, it dawned on me: my daughter and I live in different worlds.

My youngest daughter is 6 years old, and she still wants to be in my world — all the time. She loves to cook with me, go to the grocery store with me, and run errands together. Even though she has learned to read, she still wants my husband and me to read her bedtime stories. Connecting with her, at least for now, doesn’t require a lot of effort.

I’m not sure when it happens exactly, maybe around third grade or so, but one day you realize that it has been a long time since you read your child a story. Now you find her sleeping with the light on, her book open beside her. He would rather hang out with his friends than with you, and before we know it, our children are less in our world and more often in their own. And if we want to stay connected, if we want to know what makes them tick, I only know one way to do it. We leave our world and step into theirs.

I see parents doing this all the time, in all sorts of creative ways. You join a Pokémon league with your son, hoping the focused interest is just a phase. You get him to run an errand with you by bribing him with gelato. You coach your daughter’s soccer team, or take guitar lessons with your son. You play games like Balderdash when the cousins are visiting, and you find out that your daughters and your nieces are absolutely brilliant and hilarious. And they realize that you are not as old as they thought.

As our children get older, if we don’t intentionally join them in what they are doing, we will end up driving them from one activity to the next, dropping them off and picking them up, observing their lives but not participating in their lives. I know this can be tricky to figure out, since a general attitude of, “I don’t want anything to do with my parents” seems to plague many adolescents, but I don’t think that should stop us from trying. If one thing doesn’t work, try something else. The great thing is, kids never get too old for ice cream.

Ÿ Becky Baudouin lives in the Northwest suburbs with her husband, Bernie, their three daughters and their puppy, Lila.