by Gabriella Samms

Created on: April 11, 2008

Whether our parental duties began due to the biological miracle of birth, or we chose ourselves to take on the selfless endeavor to become a parental figure to another child, we cannot escape the fact that we were and will always be seen as a parent. Just because a child reaches a certain age doesn't erase the fact that we played an enormous part in their upbringing, it only means that they have reached another stage in their lives. However, if we parented properly, teaching our children to become independent adults, we will need to step aside at a certain point in time and allow our children to begin to live as the adults we prepared them to be.

Letting go of children doesn't mean we need to alienate ourselves from their lives; it simply means we need to step back and allow them to begin to live and behave as responsible adults. We can certainly offer advice and guidance to our adult children, but by no means should we continue to parent in the same way we did when they were young.

I have seen many adult children run to their parents for financial help due to their own blatant disregard for the responsibility it takes to be a productive individual. Many parents of these children give in when they shouldn't. What these parents don't realize is that they have now taught their own kids that when trouble arises, mommy and/or daddy will bail them out. Adult children who have co-dependent parents will never learn the tools in life to make it on their own. They will come to believe and often expect their parents to help them every step of the way whenever they get into trouble.

I am not implying that we should never help our adult children financially. What I'm saying is we need to weight the circumstances when it comes to even considering hand outs. For example, is our offering of money to help a child get out of a debt they irresponsibly incurred, or are they looking for help in a valid investment?

Parenting properly, with our kid's best interest in mind, isn't an easy task. Yet we must, for the sake of our kids future independence, step back and just watch as they learn new challenges and how to deal with them. If we don't, they will never be able to deal with what life throws at them. Each faze of their lives is a stepping stone; the journey through life filled with trips and falls. They will never learn how to live life responsibly if we're always their to catch them.

If we are lucky, we will be seen as a vital part of our children's lives forever: a stable presence in the lives of the kids we've raised, taught and watched grow into adulthood. Hopefully, they will still see us as an important figure in their lives and the life of their friends, spouses and children. I hope my own children will see me as such. However, I will be spending less time teaching at that point, and more time listening. I will offer my advice, but I won't expect them to take it; I will hope they make the proper decisions based on their maturity and character.

If we've raised children, we'll always be parents. What we don't need to do is be a constant dictator of how they should live their lives; hopefully our previous parenting skills taught them how to do that while they were growing up.

I look forward to being my children's parent forever. Yet most of all, I look forward to standing back and watching their lives evolve into the adults I hope I've taught them to be.

I will always be their parent; but I know there comes a time when the act of parenting needs to diminish if for nothing more then to watch what I've taught them come into play.

I need too, because one day, they'll be parents themselves.

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