Understanding the difference between parenting and being a parent is key to having healthy relationships with adult children and a healthy life once they leave home. We know from personal experience how difficult relationships can be between adults and their parents. Now it’s our turn to take a stab at it. To see if we can transition from doing to being and at the same time be parents that our adults’ kids can stand.
I had to learn, am learning, the concept myself. When the kids left home and became independent adults, I was obviously aware I wouldn’t be actively parenting them any longer, or was I?
John Rosemond provides some good points to consider in understanding the difference between parenting and being a parent. He notes that parenting wasn’t a concept before the 1960’s and it was around that time when parents started putting children at the center of attention and being worried about what they felt.
He notes that prior to the parenting movement you simply raised children and prepared them for adulthood. I know something of the concept of child rearing because that is what I experienced growing up. I learned to hate that concept but three years in counseling helped me to come to terms with a version of it that included zero emotional support.
Rosemond believes that once child rearing went out the door and parenting entered mothers became obsessed with their kids. I go on with this because I see bits and pieces of this in my own life. He believes it is demeaning for adults to desire to be liked by children and can end tragically as children who like their parents, versus respect them, have a hard time knowing how to act as adults. Hmm…something to consider.
We inherit the title of parent….
We inherit the title of parent when our children are born and that title doesn’t go away no matter how old we or they are, but it is the application of it that changes. We know that we actively parent children until they leave home, yet the lines can get blurry if we fail to transition into new roles once they are adults.
Sometimes we don’t have a clear definition of what an independent child looks like and the amount of our participation in their lives doesn’t change. Are they independent when we stop paying their bills? Is it a set age, when they finish college, or officially move out? I’ve known parents who felt they were entitled to actively parent their daughters who were in college until they were married.
The fuzzier the transition the more difficult the cut off will be.
For me active parenting stopped when they graduated high school. If I was still living with them I took advantage of them being nearby. I enjoyed every opportunity to give them advice and talk about their hopes and dreams. I was happy when they asked for my opinion and was more than happy to give it, but I no longer did so without being asked.
I didn’t provide commentary on their decisions, ask them to come home at a certain time, demands details of their lives, gripe at them until they put their phone down, and ask them to explain their behavior. If they respected our agreement of what it meant for an adult child to live in our home we became adults living in the same house.
I think most of us have a decent idea of what it means to be the parents of adults who are married with children, or of adults over the age of 30, but prior to that we can easily maintain active parenting roles if we haven’t clearly defined the time when we consider them on their own.
Researchers define helicopter parents as those who “excessively monitor” their kids and are overly involved or controlling in a way that’s inappropriate for parents of adults. Corey Stieg
There should be a time when we stop parenting and start “being” parents. When we stop paying and expecting something from them when we do. When we stop providing instruction and wait for when they want advice. When we stop shouldering their daily care and start focusing solely on ours.
I named a category for this blog Parents of Adults as I hope to focus on our role as parents after the point we are actively parenting. I think it’s important to understand clearly when we consider a child an adult and we are no longer an active part of their daily lives.
The cut off is different for different parents and determines the level of involvement they have, but in general I would hope most of us have set a time we will become parents of adults who come to us for advice, we have an adult relationship with, and whom we no longer tell what to do, when to do it, or to explain their behavior to us.
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I am a writer/blogger, management analyst by day, wife of 34 years, mother of four adults, grandmother to our first granddaughter, am passionate about helping people and organizations improve and achieve goals.
People need support and we often provide that in the shape of advice. If we look at advice as one of many pieces of information we can decide what we want to do with it.
