Time to Make Friends With Mom and Dad

I was the only one of my four siblings who went away to college and I only went 30 miles away from home to a small liberal Arts college. I lived in the dorms for 2 1/2 years and then I studied abroad for a semester in Copenhagen, Denmark. While I lived with a Danish family for five months, attended classes during the week, I had complete freedom to come and go as I pleased, traveling across Europe and Russia during breaks and weekends.

21 yr old version of myself

When I returned to the USA, I was prepared to return to the small college but I was completely unwilling to reside in a dormitory again. This proved to be a 'non-negotiable' for the little college, so we parted ways. I resigned myself to moving back home to live with my parents and to attending the massive local university. For some reason, I knew it would all work out. I was sure my parents were no longer interested in 'keeping tabs' on me and that my freedom would not be compromised.

I had already gotten a glimpse of this leniency in high school, being the third child; my folks were already 'broken-in' by my two older siblings and I suspect, 'burnt-out' on trying to keep track of their kids and their lives. By the time I was midway through high school, my older sister was married and had a baby and my brother was busy negotiating his own adventures. By the time I was a senior in college, my younger sister was also married and had a baby and later that year my brother also got married. I was the lone wolf of the family, continuing on with my pursuit of higher education.

Once the reality of what it would take for me to graduate in one year with a Biology Bachelors degree from the University of Nebraska sunk in, I quickly filled my entire summer with classes. Then, during my senior year, there was a ridiculous amount of science courses to be taken concurrently; Organic Chemistry, Physics, Microbiology, Ecology, etc. With tutoring and determination, I somehow managed to stay afloat, leaving very little time for any misbehaving. I am sure I still found time to hang out with friends on the weekends.

The thing I remember most about that year though was how I finally convinced my dad to sit still long enough to have a real 'life' conversation with me. Getting him to take me and my thoughts and opinions seriously was no small goal, but was slowly accomplished during that year. As a result, we made the shift from parent/ child relationship to friendship. The same shift occurred between my mom and I that same year, but it didn't require as much effort. The gift in that year at home was becoming friends with my parents; no longer the target of intentional or assumed criticism or the need to 'school' me in any way. Not that my folks with held their opinions on things, it's just that the pressure was off the parents, the young adult in their midst was just a shared experience in life.

I recall trying to share my enthusiasm for this new-found appreciation for my parents and was pretty much met across the board by all 3 siblings with indifference. Clearly, they hadn't the time or opportunity to make friends with our parents. The good news is that as time passed, each of my siblings did cross the natural bridge to friendship with our parents, I was just the first one to cross the bridge.

The ultra-cool thing now with three grown children of my own; is that if feels like we are all well on our way to becoming friends. And, like my parents before me, I will continue to share my opinions. Being the imperfect human I am, it is helpful that I also know how to apologize when I overstep my bounds.

Careful what you shut the door to or "what wave of growth are you skipping now?"

I am fascinated by human evolution and not the 'where did we come from' kind. I am enamored with watching our current, in-the-moment evolution; the continual evolvement of our species. Someone once said, "The only thing that is constant is change." At this point in my life, I now realize what a continual gift our children are in this process of change. Considering how much of our life changed the moment they were born, we may have been given a glimpse then of what was to come. Our children keep us young, or so the saying goes. Actually, I am now finding this to be very accurate. My children have brought me along into their world, which is very different than my world at their age. Not that their world is less than or more than what I experienced growing up; it is just a different slice in time and as a result, a different slice in reality.


I have been criticized and even taunted by my peers for trying to keep up with my children. As a parent, it is a no-brainer to me; if your child won't answer your phone call but will answer your text then I am going to learn how to text. If my middle-schooler is enthralled with hip-hop music, then I am going to listen to it each time we drive to soccer practices, so I can check out what this music is. No one warned me that I would end up knowing all the words to songs my peers don't even know exist. If my dancing daughter can't miss a single episode in the TV reality dance shows, then I am going to watch this show long enough to get addicted to it and long past my daughter's interest in it. Again, forgot to read the warning label on that one.

There are countless examples of growth my children have induced in me; some I will be eternally grateful for and some, I am grateful they got all the lessons they needed so we could all move on. Walking through life with your child can help the parents evolve and the more open the parent, the more growth that can be shared. All knowledge is cumulative and when we as parents avoid or skip certain common experiences with our children, we do indeed miss out. More likely, we become anchored in the past, unable to embrace the moment. The children of this generation live life on the cutting edge; changes happen daily in their world and impacts them profoundly. I prefer to keep swimming in the same stream as them so we can continue to speak the same language, ride the same boat, etc.

We are evolving as a society and this is reflected in our values, our pastimes, our movies, our music and our attitudes. Do we allow our view of the world to widen and expand or do we keep our blinders on so we don’t have to ‘grow’ there? Do you view new music or new ideas with skepticism or judgment automatically or are you able to embrace the joy, creativity and perhaps even the new improved version of yourself? We shut our doors on new possibilities because we are afraid; we have fears of change, fears of what others will think and fears of the unknown. Fear is paralyzing and limiting and courage is flowing and expansive. Most fears are figments of our own imaginations and are just as easily set aside. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” My wish is that you overcome your biggest fear that you won’t keep up with your children and let that motivate your inner child to keep growing.