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Being a parent involves more than discipline and allowances. Parenting requires that you provide love and guidance, as well. There is no reason to stop giving these things to your child just because they pass a certain age or reach a certain stage in life.

You will always be older and wiser than your children. You will forever have more experience than they have in certain matters.

You also enjoy the benefit of hindsight concerning your own mistakes and the knowledge of your child's beliefs and feelings when reacting to a situation. That puts you, as a parent, in a unique position to offer such support.

This is not meant to suggest that you offer your sons and daughters unsolicited advice for the rest of their lives. Parent-child boundaries alter as your children mature. Learning where those margins lie - and how to respect them - is important and helps both parents and children to foster a loving relationship as they both grow and change.

It also does not mean that you should pay your children's way through life or make their choices for them. Certainly, forever acting, and reacting, like he or she is four years old cannot serve as the foundation for a healthy relationship with an adult child. You can't hover over and protect your kids forever.

As your children go from training wheels to on-the-job training to potty training their own children, however, there is no reason that you cannot continue to guide and help them within those boundaries. You can be a resource and a rock for them while respecting them as adults. At the very least, you can provide for them a dependable source of unconditional love.

Your offspring need a parent to whom they can turn in times of need and of joy. Whether that need stems from a financial crisis, a moral question, or a happy event, mom or dad knows the history and context of these occurrences and can help work through or celebrate them. They learned their beliefs from you. Who better to guide them through the rough waters of adulthood, to offer them shelter in a storm?

For the rest of your life, through all of their changes, your children will find times when they need a shoulder to cry on or someone to whom they can brag. Parents can provide that source of comfort and encouragement for the rest of their children's lives. You wouldn't burp your grown child or tuck him or her into bed, but you can always listen to and love them.

Learn more about this author, Mel Bergen.
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