by Jimena De La Parra

Created on: April 08, 2009

As a teenager, I am thinking in my future. Where I will go to the college? What I am going to do in 5 years?, but as an unique answer of all this questions, I have my past; my childhood, my games and toys, and of course all the love that my parents gave me.

I know that flying away is an important step, and also very difficult, the same for children that for parents; but as we are leaving our house now, they did 20 years before. This is a repetitive story, parents give all that they can to their children, look them playing, help them growing and finally they have to say goodbye so those children can start a new same old story.

We have watched lots of movies that show us this change, this step. We have read lots of novels that tell us the typical "mother-jealous story". We have heard lots of chronic of our friends, but nothing compares to the real one. The most asked question is If parents can be prepared for this change?; I am not sure of that, but there is one thing that I am completely sure of, and is that parents have to accept it as their parents did, and understand that it will not be a switch-over, it is just evolution, and it does not mean that their going to lose their children, on contrary they will win mature sons or daughters that could support them.

The only thing that parents should know is that letting go their children will not change their relationship or the love that they feel; it is just a "life transition".

When the moment comes, parents and children have to be more united than ever. Both of them have to understand the other, and parents specially, have to leave their sadness and enjoy the step that their children are enjoying.

It is not an easy process, but it is a moment to share with the family, the support of the society. In Mxico, my home country, families are more united than in other countries, so children leave their house a little bit older.

In countries like England the child leaves home when he is 15 years old, and in other countries the flight begins when the child has to go to the college, when he has 18 years old.

I think that there is the secret of happiness, in the "family importance". As we grow up we take the same attitudes that our parents, and when we have a new family we repeat all that we lived in the past.

As soon as we are babies our parents should teach us the power of family, so we can accept the change that leave our house represent; the same for parents that for children.

The empty nest syndrome will disappear when parents and children understand the importance of family and also understand that is a "lifecycle"

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