by Minda Magero

Created on: November 21, 2008   Last Updated: January 27, 2009

Friendship was the term I'd always used to describe the relationship I had with my dad growing up. Often, my friends were surprised that I considered him one of my best friends. He made room for dialogue and gave some leeway for differing opinions, even though he frequently had the last word. And so it should have been: he was the adult; I was the child. I lived under his roof and he had jurisdiction over virtually all the affairs of my life.

I left home and went to study abroad when still a teenager and was shocked into growing up overnight. Very quickly, I moved from a relatively sheltered situation, where life-changing decisions were made for me, to having to make decisions about virtually everything on my own. It forced me to be confident of my own opinions, to learn to stand on my own, and to find myself. I was now my own person.

Enter my dad, who came to visit me abroad almost a decade later, and who could not immediately process the new reality that I was not the same child who had left home several years previously. In his mind, I was still a teenager, so he reacted in disbelief and anger when I questioned and even totally opposed him. He also couldn't quite process the fact that he was now under my roof, where I had the last word. In the space of a few weeks our friendship progressively unraveled, strained at the seams by our many disagreements.

Children grow up and become adults, at which point their relationships with their parents must undergo a transformation of some kind in order to survive. Most parents struggle with letting their children go; with giving them room to be different from their own parents or from the people their parents raised them to be. However, this letting go is essential, if healthy relationships are to be maintained between parents and their adult children.

The most important way in which a parent can disagree with his or her adult child without straining the relationship is by taking a step back and deliberately viewing the adult child as he or she would any other adult. Would you not respect another adult's right to hold an opinion different from yours, even if you think, yes, know, that you are right and he or she is wrong? Certainly, you would agree to disagree instead of trying to make the other person conform to your ideas or opinions. Do the same for your adult children.

Essortment.com posits that "parenting does not end whenchildren become adults. Instead, parenting skills adapt to a reduced level of authoritarian guidance."

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