Last week Anne and I had a really sad day. On Monday we both left for work and came home
to an empty house. Not that we didn’t
come home to an empty home many days but this was different. The last of our six children had packed her
car and left for college. What was
amazing was she left us some notes expressing love and appreciation that made
us cry. I read them first so I knew what
was coming for Anne when she got home.
Then on Wednesday we drove to Liberty University and helped her move
into her dorm. There was definitely a
solemnity on the drive home. Things have
changed—it's already different.
I had the privilege of raising six children. I remember vividly towing six little ones
behind us everywhere we went, including all the needed childhood paraphernalia
like strollers and portacribs, and longing for the day they were older. But nothing prepared me for the difficulty of
the years to come. I no longer had to
carry them in my arms but the emotional burden I took on for each of them was
enormously harder.
It’s been a decade since I began to parent adults and now
they are all in that category. I’m far
from being an expert but I have learned a few things as my parenting has
shifted in this new stage of life. Maybe
they will encourage you.
You can’t! The first and
maybe most important thing I learned was that I couldn’t parent adults. There comes a time in the lives of our kids
when they come from under our control and leadership and they spread their own
wings. If I continue to try to parent
them from the position of authority and power that I’ve used until then, I will
only drive them away and damage our relationship.
I didn’t get it at the time, but when I went off to college
my own father wrote me a note telling me just that. He told me I was now my own man and I had to
make my own decisions. He’d be there,
offer counsel and help me in any way he could, but I was now a man. Many of us will never say that to our kids
but it’s going to happen regardless.
They will become their own person and emancipate themselves from our
parentage, whether we want them to or not.
It will help if I will accept that I am no longer ultimately responsible
for them—they are now responsible for themselves before God.
You trust! When you come
to the place of surrendering your right to parent your adult kids, you must
also, at the same time, trust God to lead them and help them. I don’t care what the context, it’s always
scary to trust God—to surrender control.
I don’t know about you but I made plenty of mistakes as a young man—still
do—and consequently I want to spare my kids those same mistakes. Let’s be honest, we too often want to make
decisions for them. But don’t you
realize that God has used every one of your failures to make you who you
are? I don’t mean that we should want
our kids to fail or make mistakes, but I am saying we have to trust God that He
will work through it for their good—as He did with us.
And here’s what that means specifically: you and I must let
them shoulder the responsibility for the decisions they make. I’m not saying we never rescue our adult children,
sometimes we should, but far too often we don’t allow them to experience the
consequences of their choices and thereby stymie their growth. Too many moms and dads are too often bailing
their adult children out instead of trusting God. I remember Anne once heard the Lord tell her
that she was getting in the way of what He was trying to do in our kids lives. It takes a tough love to let our kids grow
through pain, but we must learn to trust God.
You pray! Along with
trusting God, we commit ourselves to remember them to God through prayer. The Bible book of James says prayer can
greatly change things. As God is
sovereignly superintending our world, He can rescue or direct our kids in
response to our petitions. If anything
we need to prioritize prayer for our adult kids, but it’s equally true that our
supplications do as much or more for us in the area of trusting God. In other words, the more I pray for my kids
the easier it is to trust God’s work in their lives.
You counsel! This may
sound contradictory to what I’ve already said, and I confess it takes some
balance, but we never give up the role of counselor to our kids. We must relinquish the desire to control
them, to tell them what to do, but never the responsibility to speak into their
lives. The Bible actually calls us to
speak into each others lives as brothers and sisters in Christ; how much more
should we do that as parents to our grown children? The difference is we speak, not from a
position of power or parental authority, but rather from a loving, equal
relationship. Jackie, a friend of ours
and a mother of three adult children in their late 30’s---early 40’s, says she
always tells her kids what she thinks but what they do with it is up to them.
You love! There is
nothing more needed by our adult kids than for us to love them. But what does that mean? Loving them means you pour into them what
they greatly need from you. They need
you to respect them, to believe in them, and to affirm them. When they don’t call as much as you like, you
call them. When you wish they’d initiate
more, you still take the lead without pouting or getting your feelings
hurt. You love them. You tell them often and you show them
continually.
Parenting toddlers had its challenges, but so does parenting
grown-ups. However there is also great
reward in this new parental relationship and I’m looking forward to what lies
ahead as I walk with my adult children.