When Holding Their Hand Becomes Holding Space.

                

 I asked for suggestions for topics to write about and a friend suggested writing about parenting your child when they become a parent. So here goes….

Parenting doesn’t stop when your children become parents themselves, it’s just a slow realization that your role is changing. You’re not the one tying shoes anymore or making the rules. You’re not even the one they call first for every little thing. To be honest, that shift can be bittersweet, because once upon a time, they needed you for everything.

I remember when my kids were little and I felt like I had all the answers. Now I realize what they need most from me isn’t the answers, it’s reassurance that they don’t have to have all the answers either. Sometimes being a good parent to your adult children looks like biting your tongue when you want to correct something. Sometimes it looks like answering a frustrated text with “you’re doing better than you think, and sometimes it’s just listening while they vent about a long day, and resisting the urge to fix it.

I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned and am still learning is the difference between being helpful and being present. Being helpful wants to solve it but present says “I’m here while you figure it out.” I also think that your adult kids don’t just need help raising their kids, they need to know you still see them. Not just “how are the kids?” But “how was your day?” Because they’re raising their children, they are also carrying responsibilities we can now see more clearly with age, bills, stress, schedules and the pressure to get it right.

Sometimes they are processing their own childhood while trying to create a good one for their kids. When my kids were young, I remember getting unsolicited advice from my former mother in law and my own mother. I did not receive it well. With my mother in law, I felt criticized and with my own mother, I told her I could not take nor did I want her advice on parenting or marriage. My plan was to do the opposite of the model she showed me. I thought I had, but I know now, I repeated some of the same mistakes. As an adult, she ended up respecting the boundaries I put in place, God gave me a heart of forgiveness for her and because of that, we grew close. 

I’m also learning that when they were little, I held their hands, now I hold space for them. Space for them to grow, space for them to make their own mistakes, space for them to do things differently and space for them to become the parents they are meant to be.

Maybe that’s what parenting adult children really is, loving them enough to let them lead their own family and loving them enough to still be their safe place too.

“Let all that you do, be done in love.” 1 Corinthians 16:14