38. Parenting Adults – Growing along with them
December 5, 2025
I am thinking about change, how everything is always changing, how hard that can be. But also, how if nothing ever changed, then we’d never grow. I don’t like change and growth all the time, but I also know that if I never had new experiences, I’d feel stuck. I’m seeking a way to strike a balance between the way things are and the way they are becoming.
A big change for me right now is that both kids are out on their own. I don’t remember hearing about any books providing advice on how to parent adult children. There are so many for infants and toddlers and a good number on school age. I did run across “How to Raise an Adult” by Julie Lythcott-Haims, which I highly recommend. That book has advice for how to instill skills and experiences when they are small, so they will be more prepared to be adults. Parenting adults is a new frontier. I do feel like we have been growing inti this role as they applied to and attended college, and took on internships and new living arranagements, but we are leveling up this year.
Our kids are now 22 and 24, with the youngest finishing college this month. They are both in domestic partnerships, something that my Catholic upbringing and traditional father did not lead us to consider. The world is so different now; it’s quaint to think of waiting until marriage to live together. This seemed like a quick change, but it happened over decades.
I want to keep up with the times, to not get left behind. Like in this example, I see how easily we can seem out of touch as we get older, if we hold onto perspectives that have become outdated. At the same time, I do not want to toss my values out the window, so l need to take the time to figure out what I really care about, hold onto that, let go of the rest, and figure out how to make it all work together. I think we can work to not automatically assume that change is bad, but be aware that change in society is natural and necessary.
This coming year, I will be laying down some new paths, new ways of thinking, to help me to navigate this shift. We are changing from our family unit (the four of us) to three separate and connected units – me and John, our daughter and her partner, and our son and his partner. Both kids went to away college and were away from us for a time, so it’s not like they have not left home. They had apartments and roommates and their own daily lives, and we’ve lived like that for a few years. But something now feels different. The story we tell of having an “empty nest” when they leave for college isn’t exactly right. During that time, our house still served as their home base, so it wasn’t empty all the time. Now that they are living with their partners, our unit of four feels, well, done. And it’s a bit sad to be honest. But still, wonderful and awesome and what I want for them.
It can be two things, both sad and happy. Both something to celebrate and something that brings a bit of melancholy. Isn’t all change like that? We do not have good models for that in our culture – how to hold two seemingly opposite emotions. It’s something I will be practicing this coming year. Please share your words of wisdom in the comments below.
