Many of you are in the midst of taking your teens to college or watching them move on to a new stage of life.  You have anticipated this day for many years, sometimes dreading it and other times impatiently waiting for it to arrive. Launching your child brings a mixture of emotions and takes you to places you have never been.

I’d like to share a few thoughts with you because this is an important moment for you and your child. You want to do this well because it will set the tone for the next several years:

As children grow older and develop a frame of reference about life, things, opportunities, and people, chances are parents will hear them say, “That’s not fair”. They will protest loudly about the injustice of the unfair and expect you to come to the rescue to fix it. In many instances, you will probably make the mistake of doing just that: fixing the injustice.

I may have just surprised you by this comment, but I feel very strongly about this issue in today’s parenting. Too often, parents are jumping in to solve the problem, fix the injustice, and make the world a wonderful place once again. Unfortunately, most of us wrongly assume it’s a parent’s job to make sure life doesn’t get too out of balance so our kids don’t get stressed or unhappy.

 Vacations are tricky things when it comes to parents and their adult children. Parents often have expectations about what their adult children’s vacations should look like and the children don’t quite know how to address it with the parents. Too often, they will make up an excuse or create a diversion from the truth in order to avoid confronting the issue before them.

The hard truth in this situation is that young adults look at vacation time differently than their parents. As a result, parents get their feelings hurt and take everything personally, which in most cases, is absolutely not the case.

We are halfway through the year and in the middle of our summer plans. School’s out, camp is on, and vacations in some form or another are being experienced by many families. It is a time where memories are made, schedules are different, and children of all ages get to play.

In a few days, we will celebrate the Fourth of July. It is a national holiday that typically concludes with fireworks, patriotic music, and barbecues or picnics. It is a day for national pride as well as appreciation that we live in a nation where we have the privilege of living free. Hopefully, in the midst of our celebration we will remember the cost of the freedom we celebrate.