Reflections on an 18 year old

My son recently turned 18. By many standards, he’s now an adult. In fact, I’m impressed at the number of things an 18-year-old can do in the US (see here). He can change his name, move out, rent an apartment, join the military, adopt a child, and sue me for bad parenting — all before sunset.

Naturally, this milestone makes me reflect on my own experience:

• Kids don’t turn out the way we think/hope/expect. That’s good, normal, and healthy. The unexpected is both the scariest and the most beautiful.
• I’m not the Dad I hoped to be. All my quirks and shortcomings in life didn’t go away when I became a father (like I hoped). Instead, they got accelerated and became painfully obvious. That’s normal — and OK.
• Parenting is constant adaptation. What worked one year doesn’t the next. Autopilot doesn’t work for more than a week in this gig.
• There’s a lot of parenting advice out there – and only a tiny percentage works well for my kid.
• Most parenting resources emphasize involvement with kids. They say very little about self-differentiation and letting go – things with which I needed much more help.
• I’m deeply grateful for every moment of time I’ve invested in my kids. The downside is it makes it much harder to let them go.

For good reason, at milestones like this many parents feel like they’ve run a marathon: tired yet exhilarated, strong yet worn down, part of an elite community of survivors—and proud to cross the finish line no matter how ugly some mile markers were. My son deserves credit for being the trailblazer to give this experience to me.

I conclude with words from Henri Nouwen: “We didn’t create our children, nor do we own them. This is good news. We don’t need to blame ourselves for all their problems, nor should we claim for ourselves their successes. Children are gifts from God. …They do not belong to us. They belong to God, and one of the greatest acts of trust in God is letting our children make their own choices and find their own way” (Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, NY: Crossroad, 1994, pp. 118-19).