High School graduation for my “baby” came fast! She graduates on Friday and when she heads off to college in August, my husband and I will officially be “empty nesters.”  I know she’s ready to spread her wings and fly, and well prepared to be on her own.  I’ve been preparing myself for this moment for the last several years, so I’m a little surprised by the waves of emotion that have been stirred up as the ceremonies and celebrations have begun for Senior week.  I have a month’s supply of tissues to get me through the next five days, and I’ll rely on a little help from my friends to remind me that we’re all ready for this chapter to end, and a new one to begin. 

The tension is real, though.  We’re happy for her and excited for us, while simultaneously experiencing a bitter-sweetness in this transition.  The house will be quiet and we'll miss our kids and the activity, noise, mess, conversation and laughter that they bring. There’s loss as kids mature and our role as parents changes.  As they move out to take their next steps towards independence, living (and hopefully thriving!) as contributing, tax paying citizens, they’ll make the world a better place in their own unique ways.  We’ve planted a lot of seeds and gotten a few things right over the years.  And yet, we’re more aware than ever of every mistake we’ve made as parents, big and small.  Have we taught them all that we need to?  If not, it’s a little late … they stop listening around junior year and we have to trust that the seeds we planted will bear fruit.  We do trust.  We just need to remind each other of this truth when one of us doubts.  Which we do frequently.  Thankfully not at the same time.  One of us is usually rational when the other is worrying.  Okay, if I’m totally honest, my husband is the Rational One, and I’m the Worry Wart! 

For many of us, our first child becomes a guinea pig for our parenting … we make a lot of mistakes, learn a lot of lessons, then make adjustments in how we parent the second child.  If we’d had a third child, perhaps we would get it right with #3, but since we stopped with two kids, our parenting experiment is over.  The good news is, our mistakes have taught our kids a lot about resilience, grace, and forgiveness, and since the world is in need of more of those things, I think we did okay and they’ll be just fine, too.  That said, if we can save any parents some pain, below are nine things we wish knew from the start.

1)     The stability of your family rests in the stability of your marriage.  Making your kids your priority and your marriage secondary is a mistake.  Make sure you and your spouse are unified and on the same page.  I remember reading when my son was an infant something along the lines of “You’ll never be a better parent than you are a spouse.”  That seemed extreme at the time, but it turned out to be true.  Some of the biggest pain points in our family happened during seasons we lost sight of making our marriage the priority. The investment you make in your marriage blesses your children and the next generation, too! 

2)     Pursue your dreams and seek fulfillment in your own life.  Continuing to live your own life fully relieves the undue pressure your kids experience when you live vicariously through them.  It can be easy to convince yourselves that your kids are with you for a short time and decide to focus on them.  Putting your dreams on the back burner for 18 years or more is stifling though.  If we allow ourselves to lose the spark and passion that fuels our dreams, it’s no wonder kids think being a grown up is boring and unfulfilling.  Nothing inspires kids more than seeing you flourish in your own life, modeling what an intentional, purpose filled life looks like. 

3)     Focus on their strengths.  Focusing on and developing strengths goes further than “helping” them to improve their weaknesses or perceived flaws. Rather than criticize where they’re falling short, recognize where they’re flourishing.  Give them every opportunity to do more things where they demonstrate natural aptitude.  Advertising, social media, and all the messages that bombard your kids daily will feed their fear of not being good enough in a competitive world.  Be sure to build your kids’ confidence and assure them that they are enough and they have what it takes to succeed in life.  When you believe in them, they will believe in themselves and grow in confidence.  Their strengths might be very different than yours, and everyone else’s in the family, and their differences should be celebrated and developed.  The world needs their unique gifts. 

4)     Model the behavior you want to see in them.  Your kids “hear” your behavior more loudly than they hear your words.  They’ll notice and imitate what you do more than what you say.  You can’t give your kids what you don’t possess yourself.  So work on being the best, most whole hearted version of yourself.  That doesn’t mean striving for perfection.  You’re human so you’ll never be perfect.  Instead, let them see you take risks and fail, give yourself grace and try again.  Arianna Huffington says, “The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother (parent) is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly — indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.”

5)     Learn their love language.  In his book Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman explains five ways that people receive love from others.  They are: words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, receiving gifts and quality time.  We often give love in the way that we’re wired to receive it.  But if your love language is words of affirmation and your child’s love language is receiving gifts, then no matter how much you affirm them because it comes naturally to you, your words won’t demonstrate your love as you intend.  However, when you give them token gifts to let them know you’re thinking of them during the day, their love tank gets filled up!  Receiving gifts is my last love language, and I’m not a big consumer.  I was fearful of raising spoiled kids so when I found out my daughter’s love language is receiving gifts, I resisted.  Gift giving felt over indulgent, materialistic, and not aligned  with my core values.  I’m grateful a close friend challenged me on this, and encouraged me to get creative with finding thoughtful gifts that don’t break the bank.  I discovered that small gifts, like fun pens from the office supply store, or her favorite iced chai tea almond milk latte from her favorite café, are fun treats for her to receive.  These aren’t over indulgent gifts. She receives them with appreciation, and experiences them as demonstrations of love.  Even better, I’ve observed that as much as she loves receiving gifts, she also loves giving them!  She’s generous and thoughtful about the gifts she chooses for others and gets joy from giving, not just receiving. 

6)     Encourage them to take risks, make mistakes and experience failure.  As parents, you’re raising adults, not kids.  If you’re successful, your kids will have increasing responsibilities and freedom as they get older and demonstrate they’re capable of even more responsibility.  They should be able to self govern by the time they leave for college, without self-destructing when you’re not there to help them.  So, high school isn’t the time for fearful, helicopter parenting, it’s the time for letting go and finding out where there might be learning opportunities.  If you plant seeds when they’re younger and increase their privileges as they demonstrate responsibility, at some point you have to trust that they’re the capable young adults you’ve raised them to be.  Will they make mistakes?  Yes, of course.  They’re human.  But you want your home and relationship to be a safe place to make mistakes so when they get to college and in the working world, they’re prepared to take risks, fail, and get up and try again.  They’ll have courage to ask for help when they need it, too, if they learn there’s no shame in failing and starting over.  The cost of your overreaction when they mess up is they may play small and avoid taking risks.  If you find yourself overreacting, that might tell you more about you than them.  Check in with yourself and be curious.  Parenting stretches us to grow beyond our comfort zones and that’s a gift!

7)     Be intentional about the relationship you want to create.  Do you, like me, want an open and honest relationship with your teens?  Think for a second …. do you really?  Are you prepared for the truth when they open up to you?  I learned early on that you can’t have it two ways.  If you want an open and honest relationship, then you can’t punish them or freak out when they tell the truth.  Responding to the truth in fear creates distance and mistrust in the future, and you don’t get multiple chances to miss the boat on this.  I grew up in a strict home, and pushed against all the boundaries, but I also tended to be sneaky to avoid conflict when something was important to me.  Sleepovers were one way I got around a lot of my parent’s strict rules (at least I thought so; my parents probably weren’t as naïve as I imagined). As a parent, I wanted a different environment for my kids, but my actions didn’t match what I said I wanted.  I assumed the worst of my daughter when she asked to sleep over at friends’ houses, thinking she’d be sneaky like I was as a teen. Early in her teen years I realized I had to release the fears that stemmed from my past in order to preserve our relationship and prevent walls from going up unnecessarily.  

8)     What you resist, persists.  Along the same lines as my point above, if you intentionally try to do the opposite of your parents, out of fear of repeating an unhealthy family dynamic, it can backfire and you can recreate exactly what you’re trying to avoid.  Have you ever made a statement such as “I’ll never do ______________  like my mom,” or “I don’t ever want to be like my dad as far as ______________ is concerned”?   These statements are loaded with judgment and unforgiveness.  In the example above, if I had continued parenting in fear, I would have pushed my daughter to become sneaky against her nature by making truth telling intolerable.  Rather than defining what you don’t want for your family, it works better to form a vision for what you do want, based on what’s most important to you, and keep that vision in mind throughout the years. One of my favorite things I do with my clients is help them to define their core values and create a mission statement. This helps them to see where their life is out of alignment, and helps them get back on track to the more purposeful life they want to create. We all need to check in with ourselves from time to time.

9)     Focus on character development, not performance.  Our teens live in a high pressure environment today.  Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse and high risk behaviors are alarmingly high, and the most “at risk” group of kids for these issues are not poor  inner city kids as you might expect, but affluent kids.  Why?  Suniya Luthar’s research shows that the message from kindergarten to college from parents, educators, and our culture is “You can, therefore you must.”  The level of expectation on kids today to achieve and perform is unsustainable.  There are many amazing colleges in the US to learn and thrive, and college isn’t the only path for kids.  If you want to create an environment kids long to return to when they get older, focus on character development rather than how they perform academically and in extra-curricular activities.  Use praise more frequently than criticism to build them up rather than tear them down.  Dr Luthar also says parents need their own support network in place to manage the pressures of parenting.  Be intentional about building a supportive community; it really does take a village!

When all else fails, be encouraged by Peter’s reminder: “above all, keep loving one another earnestly, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).  When we mess up as parents, kids love hearing us admit we got it wrong, apologize and do better going forward.  They learn humility and resilience as we model it for them.

I’d love to hear in the comments below, what do YOU wish you knew about parenting before you learned the hard way?  No shame, all grace … we can learn so much from each other!