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When do you think we should let our children take on more responsibility? When they lose interest in Nickelodeon? When they learn to drive? When they give us grandchildren?
After all, they have to start making their own decisions and planning their own activities one of these days. Don't they?
My 17-year-old daughter, Kate, wanted to arrange a Broadway outing with nine friends she had met at sleep-away camp. Because none of them lived nearby, the arrangements were quite intricate, including everything from ticket orders to parental approvals to travel plans. It was a challenge, but just enough of one, I thought, to give Kate a good, basic grounding in logistical management and dealing with people. It's never too early. After all, she may have to take care of me when I start to lose all sense of reality (which, with the stress I've been feeling lately, may be the day after tomorrow).

At one point, Kate asked for some help writing a follow-up email to her friends concerning the reimbursements. (She laid out the money for all the tickets so that the seats would be together.) But I wasn't able to help her out because I had a ton of problems of my own to deal with. For one thing, I was fighting with a contractor who insisted that accidentally putting his foot through my bathroom ceiling was simply part of the home improvement process. Secondly, I was trying to discover the source of the knock-knock-knocks coming out of my heating system. I had become convinced that Tony Orlando and Dawn had taken up residence somewhere in my basement, and I searched endlessly for them down there.
So who had time for Kate?
With all the preoccupations, you might imagine how frustrated I was to open the mail one day to find a check with the word rent payment' written on the memo line. Why was it so frustrating? Because I had no idea that we were renting anything! Was I so preoccupied with my own problems that I didn't even know that my wife had rented the room that my older daughter had recently vacated to go to college?
Frantically, I sought out my wife and complained, "Honey, it's not that I don't want the extra money. I do. But for heaven's sake, can't I be involved in some of the decisions made in this household? Why in heaven's name are we getting a rent check from a Mr. Patrick Wilson?"
At that point, Kate, who was sitting nearby, looked up from her homework, a pleased look on her confident face. "Oh, that's from Kelly's dad," she said. "It's for the Broadway show we're seeing next month."
"What Broadway show?" I asked.
"Rent, of course. Where have you been?"
Which only goes to prove that sometimes even fathers shouldn't be given too much responsibility, no matter how old they are.

Learn more about this author, Joel Samberg.
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