The university professor had warned that his commencement invocation would be long and suggested that the feeble might want to have a seat. My mind wandered as he began, more interested in gazing at the crowd than in concentrating on his words. Something made me tune in as Dr. Kim began speaking of recognition for those that had accompanied the graduates to this point in their lives. One sentence stuck in my mind. “. . . We the mothers and the fathers who once upon a time changed their diapers, but now feel somewhat lost because we do not quite know how to be their co-adults.”

This stirred thoughts of my own struggles as a parent and those I observe in other parents, young and old. This parental resistance to co-adulthood is the center of so many lasting family conflicts. Why do parents have such difficulty making this transition? Is it habit? Fear of failure? Apprehension about relinquishing power?

I had thought about this a lot over the past 8-10 years as my children became teenagers, and moved rapidly to adulthood. Based on something I’d read long ago I had vowed to gradually let go, to let them experience the rewards and blunders of life while I was close enough to supply a safety net.

Vowing and performing were not the same. I knew my time of influence was short. I wanted to program their brains like efficient computers. To prepare them for every life possibility. To spare them from any possible mistakes. To teach them everything I didn’t know at their age. When I rambled on enthusiastically, grounded in good intentions, I felt a dark window shade come down between us. I was shut off like the power button on a stereo. My ungrateful daughters! Didn’t they know how much I still could teach them?

My epiphany came with this realization: “Parenting is about discharge planning.” It’s a temp job, eighteen to twenty years max. In nursing, the discharge planner is the person that meets the patient on the day they enter the hospital, and from that first day, prepares him to leave. That’s how parenting is, from that first day when you cuddle your tiny infant. From that first time you bathe, dress, and feed your child. When later you teach her to walk, talk, and cross the street alone. When you lead her to read, to reason, and make decisions. From day one you are preparing for when your child becomes an adult, and will no longer require your parenting services. You transform from doing everything for your child till gradually the child does everything for herself. If you are successful, your parenting job is done.

The key is “gradually”. This doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen the day your child moves away from home. It happens long before that. It is facilitated by trust in your own parenting skills, and trust in the abilities of your child. The timetable for parenting is this: The first eleven or twelve years are the indoctrination years. The time to infuse your values into their little sponge-like brains, before they realize you don’t know everything. The next eight to ten are the internship years. Time to let them practice life under your supervision. Time when you can finally admit what they suspect, that you don’t know everything. Then come the thirty or forty years of reward for parent and progeny; the co-adult years. These years of maturity and shared life experience ease the transition to a time when the initial roles may reverse. To a time when an aging parent may become dependent on her adult child.

I don’t know just when the idea of parental discharge fully penetrated my mind. Maybe it was when I considered that the satisfaction I receive from independently solving a difficult problem was something my children needed also. Maybe it was when, as a graduate student, I had to depend on my daughters to teach me algebra. Maybe it was at the moment I finally noticed that when I didn’t volunteer advice, my daughters often asked–and the window shade stayed up.

There is a proverb commonly quoted that says, “Teach a child how he should live, and he will remember it all his life.” It doesn’t say you’ll have to keep reminding, questioning, leaving lists and checking up. It says teach, and he’ll remember.

Even believing this, I still had the urge to take over, though not as often. When I did, the shade unfailingly came down. Finally when my daughters were in their late teens I made a declaration, an open disclosure of my inner resolution, “I am now your mother emeritus.” I told them I trusted their decision-making capabilities and my role was now that of a consultant. I was abandoning my authoritarian tendencies. I told myself, that I trusted my past parental accomplishments. Saying it out loud helped.

I slip up less often now, and the rewards are great. It is a joy to learn from my daughters. It is a joy to observe them applying lessons taught years before. I am consulted regularly, and seek their guidance as well. I am worry free, not about what life will hand them, but about how they will handle life.

Anita Jones Horner © 2000