Becoming a Parent to Adults

One of the most difficult times in parenting is that delicate time when children become adults and leave home.  Since you brought them home from the hospital you directed every aspect of their lives down to the smallest detail.  As Christian parents you sought to instill in them a love for God and His Word.  You trained them to make decisions that took into account, above all else, God's will.  While at home if you saw them taking actions outside your training, you could discipline them in an appropriate way so they didn't make the same mistake again.  That was then...this is now!  Now they are gone.  They are adults.  You have seen this coming for a long time.  You have made every effort to do the "slow release" thing and you thought you did a pretty good job.  However, "slow release" brings us all to that day when we must press the jettison button.  It's a terribly painful day for both the parent and the adult child.  There is a process of adjustment. 


My parents were very hands-on.  My Dad was a "John Wayne" type character.  He had no problem saying, "you don't do as I do, you do as I say"!  As wrong as it was his powerful, and at times overpowering, personality made me accept it without dispute.   It also weakened my ability to make a decision or confront.    I was married at 19.  Yes, that wasn't unusual way back then!  The lack of preparing me to being released as an adult had a negative impact on my marriage as well.  I could see my wife was frustrated because she had just left her parents and needed an "adult" to help her navigate the waters to adulthood too.  I retreated to becoming passive and forcing her to lead.  It took a few years to get this worked out.  It was only when I became a Christian and began to seek the will of God that this was settled. Looking back on it though there seems to be something worse than being kicked out of the nest unprepared.  What could that be?  Never being truly released is much worse, in my opinion.  This is especially prevalent in Christian families.  Parents tend to want to make sure the adult children stay the course and actually can interfere with the purposes of God. 


As my three children reached adulthood I faced the learning curve.  Like many, I didn't do a very good job with the first one and hopefully improved down the chain.  One of the most powerful lessons I learned was the shift away from being the disciplinarian.  I'm not sure that my Dad every accepted that he wasn't my primary disciplinarian even after I was married and had children of my own.  He still wanted to control.  That control is very damaging to an adult child.  It forces conflict and often separation.  When an adult child leaves home a parent is no longer the one in charge of discipline.  Now that role is moved away from the father to the Heavenly Father.  Now the method of discipline leading to wisdom is sowing and reaping.  The results of decisions made becomes either the reward or the penalty. 

May the Lord give us all wisdom and great grace is these matters!