The Responsibilities of Parenting

Parenting is weird at my house these days. 

Really weird.  Mostly because I don’t find myself doing a lot of it any more.

Don’t get me wrong.  Better Half and I still live here.  We still foot the bill, ask the questions, drive the carpools, “inspire” by nagging, impose the curfews, listen to the stories, play out the worst-case scenarios in our heads, drive ourselves crazy, and try to steer Pozo de Dinero in the general direction of The Good Ship Lollipop. 

But now that our youngest child is fourteen and our oldest is a month shy of twenty-one, our responsibilities have shifted.

We used to be responsible for our children.

We were responsible for their safety.  For their basic needs.  For their health.  For their welfare.  For their behavior.  For their grades.  For their friendships.  For their spiritual/moral upbringing. And being responsible for all of that stuff takes an awful lot of doing.  From sun-up to sun-down kind of doing.  Sometimes with very little sleep.   

But now I’ve discovered that we’re moving out of that phase of parenting.  We are becoming less and less responsible for our children.

We are knee-deep in experiencing our teens as unique individuals completely separate from Better Half and me.  They have their own thoughts, ideas, paths, and stories. 

This is both freeing and terrifying. 

Sometimes—many times—they do or say or think unbelievably amazing things that leave me in awe of the humans that they are.  The mother part of me who has spent all of her adult life being responsible for these people wants to take credit for them. 

It’s also terrifying.

Because sometimes, they do or say or think unbelievably bone-headed and crazy things that leave me in fear of how on earth they are going to survive until their brains are completely developed.  The mother part of me who is 62% martyr and 38% narcissist feels obligated to take responsibility for these things as well.

But the thing is, they are reaching a point where they are responsible for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. And I firmly believe that for me to take either the credit or the responsibility for their choices or ideas or actions is to diminish their individuality and squelch an important part of their process of becoming an adult.

As we enter this new stage with our kids, I’ve noticed something.  The responsibility hasn’t diminished.  But instead of being responsible for them, I find that we are now responsible to them.

I am responsible to love them unconditionally.

I am responsible to be an example—both by being transparent with my mistakes and forthright with my successes—of the kind of person I hope they will be.

I am responsible to listen.

I am responsible to ask questions.

I am responsible to forgive and to offer grace and to allow them to experience natural consequences of their decisions—no matter how hard it might be for them, or for me.

I am responsible to stand beside them if they need an ally.  

I am responsible to be truthful with them.

I am responsible to be the voice of reason (when I can—when they’ll listen) that bridges the gap between their frontal lobe and the rest of their brain until that connection is made.

I’m responsible to stock the fridge, keep the laundry detergent full, show them how to manage their finances and then get out of the way and let them make their own lunches, turn all their white socks red, and have their debit card denied because they added instead of subtracted, or misjudged the day their paycheck was deposited.   

Most importantly, I believe I am responsible to pray for them.  For their safety, their basic needs, their friends, their choices, their health, their lives.  But mostly for their parents. J