Learning to let go can be one of the hardest things we ever do as parents. No matter how ready you think you are or how much your teenagers have bugged you over the years, when the time finally comes for them to spread their wings it can be difficult.

As parents of toddlers you were always there to pick them up when they fell, to band aid their knees when scrapes happened or to dry tears and kiss it better.

When they went to school you read with them, watched as they began to master writing and sums and rejoiced as they began to make friends.

When they entered the dreaded teenage years you listened as they slammed doors and hated you, you struggled with them through biology, chemistry and math and watched as friendships exploded and then were pieced back together again.

During all this time that you were teaching your bundle of joy how to be a fully fledged and socially acceptable person, they were teaching you how to let go of them when the time came.

When they screamed as you dropped them at nursery school and you left feeling as if you had abandoned your child with wolves, only to return a few hours later to find a cherub playing in the sandbox, they taught you that they would be ok without you for a few hours.

When you dropped them in their shiney uniform for their first day of school and returned to tales of the friends they had made, they taught you that they could interact with the world without you.

Suddenly when children become teenagers the world is against them, personally, and so are you. You can't possibly understand them and they really dont need you, until their best friend turns against them or the fairytale relationship turns sour. Then they turn back into that toddler that needs an emotional band aid and a kiss to make it better, but only for a brief moment. They teach us that they are nearly ready to go it alone but want to check you are still there.

In their struggle to assert their independance they help us to realise that it is the very struggle that teaches parents that their children need their independance.

And so we grow, parent and child, both learning and both teaching until your child moves out and if you are lucky, every now and then, you will find washing dumped in front of your machine to remind you that you are still needed.

Learn more about this author, Lorna Mclaren.
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