Parenting young adults raises tough questions

First of three parts

"Parents never stop being parents." I forget where I heard that, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

Even if we successfully let go of our children as they grow up - when it comes right down to it, that is our job - there always will be a part of us that continues to think, feel and sometimes act like "Mom" or "Dad."

Now, that's not bad. Mom and Dad can be important people whether we are 3 or 53.

The problem comes when we Moms and Dads fail to realize that we and our children continue to grow and develop throughout our lives, and that our relationships need to adjust to these changes.

Much has been written about how parents can best relate to infants, young children or teenagers. Only recently, however, have we begun to pay attention to what it's like to be parents of adult children. That stage of family life can be just as important, and difficult, as the stages before it. Let's talk about it a bit.

First, when do our children really become adults? For our purposes, let's define adulthood as when a person begins to live independently, either singly or married, or when a person reaches age 21 but still lives at home.

My assumption, then, is that sooner or later, like it or not, all of us grow up and go through different stages of adulthood. To discuss how we relate to our adult children, let's take it one stage at a time.

Stage 1: Parenting Young AdultsYoung adults look like adults and sometimes even act like adults, but have these kids of ours really grown up? That's a tough question. We all mature at different rates. Even though we are in our own apartment, married or in our 20s, there is no guarantee we have grown up. Actually, adulthood is not something we ever really reach. We still are growing up until the day we die. At this stage, what is especially hard for parents are the situations in which our young adult children could use a good dose of parenting. And, with the wisdom of hindsight, we often want to jump in and save them from the mistakes we made at that age. To be honest, we probably want to save ourselves as well. When our children - even our adult children - hurt, we parents hurt with them. And when they struggle and sometimes fail, we may question how good a job we really did raising them. To further complicate things, it is possible our children have taken center stage in our lives. Our own needs, and the needs of our marriage, may have taken a back seat to our kids. As a result, we can be uneasy with suddenly having time just for ourselves or our marriages. We may not know what to do with ourselves or with each other. So what do we do? First, we need to remember how we learned what we know about adult life. Sooner or later we all went out and just did it. We made, and still make, a good many mistakes in the learning process. When we protect our adult children from life, we simply get in the way of them learning how to be successful adults. Likewise, when we use our children to fill our time or avoid our own growth, or when we use them to help us avoid confronting our personal or relational pain, we cheat ourselves.Parents also need to continue working at being grown up, even when it gets a bit uncomfortable. Of course, our adult children may sometimes want to be treated like children. Growing up is no picnic, and most of us at one time or other wished we could just be taken care of. That means not only do we parents have to resist the temptation to run out and "make everything better" for our young adult children, but we sometimes have to resist their pressure for us to rescue them as well. Simply put, both we and our young adult children have to be allowed to experience life - the positive and the negative.That doesn't mean we cut our children off. It does mean we offer only the sort of help appropriate for adults, and focus our lives on arenas other than parenting. It can be difficult deciding what is and isn't appropriate; it's challenging to rediscover our life's direction beyond parenting. We must continually ask ourselves: are we allowing our adult children to be adults? Are we allowing ourselves to be who we need to be? Those are tough but necessary questions. Next week we'll consider the second stage of relating to adult children: Parenting Married Children. bull; The Rev. Ken Potts' book, "Mix, Don't Blend: A Guide to Dating, Engagement, and Remarriage with Children," is available through book retailers.