Next week we drop Trevor off at college and, in a very real sense, we graduate as parents. After many years of heart training, setting the moral standard, and instructing the countless practical and moral reasons why behind so many things, we graduate from parenting. Of course this does not mean we are no longer Mom and Dad. We will always be Mom and Dad, but the majority of our parenting journey with Trevor has ended. He is an emerging adult and needs to put into practice and draw upon all that we have lovingly taught him for the past 18 years. His own experiences will now begin to shape and define him as an adult. After all, that is the goal of parenting; providing your children with the foundation and the tools to succeeded and grow into adulthood.
Intuitively we all know our children will grow up and have their own lives just as our own parents and their parents before them understood. But the idea of graduating from your parenting journey seems nearly impossible to grasp when you are changing diapers, running down a toddler in the store, helping with homework, or dealing peer pressure issues.
We love this video from Gary & Anne Marie Ezzo’s Parenting From the Tree of Life Series because it not only represents the journey of motherhood, but the journey of parenting, in its totality, as well. As we outlined in our Parenting Phases letter, the joys and challenges of parenting evolve at all the various phases and we must transition our parenting as our children grow and develop. We must also remember that our children will eventually leave and our formal parenting phase will come to an end. In essence, we are working ourselves out of a job as parents!
So as we graduate from parenting Trevor and drop him off at school, we have strong mixed emotions. While we are so proud at the young man he is becoming and proud of the loving intention we put towards parenting him, there is a sadness knowing that this concludes this stage of our parenting journey. In spite of all the challenges we encountered in his eighteen years, today all the struggles seem so distant. Now, we are only reminiscent of all the wonderful joys we’ve experienced as we ALL grew up together. And while we have looked forward to graduating from parenting, now that it is here, it is truly bittersweet!
Our relationship with Trevor will now enter into a new phase with completely different contexts. As we’ve seen demonstrated with the Marrs and their adult children, it’s our greatest desire that we will become his wise counsel, trusted mentors and genuine friends for many more decades than we spent parenting him. Our relational dynamic will change and develop as he experiences life on his own. He will discover that we were “right” about so many things we taught and explained to him. And he will discover that, we were “wrong” at times and made some mistakes as well. Ultimately, we pray that he will come to fully understand and appreciate that we did the best job of loving and raising him that we could. In turn, we hope that understanding will serve him (and his future wife) one day, when it’s their turn to graduate as a parents.
Blessings to your family,
Shelly and Rich