Letting Go With Love : Parents Owe It to Their Kids to Make Room for Baby to Grow Up

“You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. . .”

--from “The Prophet,” by Kahlil Gibran

From the moment they’re born, children are experts at reminding those who brought them into the world that parenting is a temporary job.

At every milestone--taking their first steps, starting school, learning to drive, beginning to date, getting their first job--they put their parents on notice, giving them an unsettling push toward emptynesthood.

Smart parents see these moves toward independence as opportunities to practice letting go--rehearsals for that heart-wrenching time when their offspring leave home for good.

You may need more practice than others if you:

* Are afraid to leave your baby with a sitter.

* Rush to your child’s defense when a playmate gets out of line.

* Go over every homework assignment to make sure there are no errors.

* Ask so many questions that you give your teen-ager no room for privacy.

* Constantly hear: “You never let me do anything!” or “Why can’t you let me learn from my own mistakes?”

Joanie Heinemann, who gives lectures on how to let go of your kids, sees many parents who overprotect, rescue and snoop, putting themselves in the center of their children’s lives when they should be offering guidance and support from the sidelines.

As children grow, “you have to work as hard at distancing them as you did at getting to know them when they were born,” says Heinemann, 60, who’s studying to be a family counselor at the Coastline Counseling Center in Newport Beach.

If you don’t, you may end up with an anxious, insecure adult child who doesn’t have the confidence or skill to make a relationship work or build a successful career.

“Many adults are immobilized because their parents haven’t let go,” Heinemann says.

A registered nurse who works at UCI Medical Center, Heinemann speaks from experience when she tells parents that it’s never too early to start letting go. Divorced in 1968, she raised three daughters as a single mother and worked hard at teaching them independence.

Heinemann’s daughter, Kristen Lamont, 29, recalls: “For our 16th birthdays, she opened a checking account for each of us, deposited a small amount, handed over the checks and told us we were responsible. We learned how to manage our money.”

Lamont says her mother always pointed her in the right direction but didn’t make decisions for her.

For example, Heinemann expressed her opinion when she disapproved of boys Lamont dated during high school but never insisted her daughter stop seeing anyone.

“All it took was a matter of time for me to come to that decision myself,” Lamont says.

She’s grateful that her mother gave her enough responsibility and freedom to enable her to develop self-assurance. “When problems come up, I feel confident that I can deal with them,” she says.

Heinemann acknowledges that she sometimes felt the impulse to cling to her children--especially when she was lonely--but she kept reminding herself to focus on “what’s best for the child, not what’s best for me.”

As a result, she proudly watched each of her daughters leave home and become self-supporting at 18. They bought their own cars and worked their way through college, while many of their peers remained dependent on their parents for so long that they finally had to be pushed out of the nest.

The prevalence of parents with “boomerang” kids who have returned home after failing to make it on their own isn’t just an economic phenomenon, Heinemann contends.

She says some adult children bounce back because their parents did so much for them while they were growing up that they never learned to fend for themselves.

In affluent Orange County, she adds, too many parents “measure their own self-worth by what they give their children.” Excessive generosity may deprive children of the satisfaction and confidence they can gain from making and managing their own money.

“The only way you ever can really succeed and feel good about yourself is when you’ve accomplished something. As long as we keep giving young people everything they need to survive, they’ll never learn how to do it on their own,” Heinemann stresses.

Some parents are overly indulgent because they’re afraid of losing their children’s friendship. “They’ve lost sight of what parenting is about”--perhaps, Heinemann suggests, because they’re trying to compensate for an unhappy marriage or disappointments in other parts of their lives.

“Many times parents seek self-fulfillment through their children,” she explains. “But the reason we’re parents is to provide a nurturing, loving, safe place for children to learn independence and grow. You’re a parent--not a friend.”

Ruth Luban, a Laguna Beach therapist, says some people who feel unfulfilled “over-identify with their role as a parent” and end up exercising so much control that their children don’t have the opportunity to make decisions or take risks. “Parents need a healthy sense of self so they can be role models and let kids go off and find out who they are.”

Luban points out that children tend to alternate between periods of defiance and compliance.

“Be sensitive to those alternating stages and step back during defiant, exploring times and allow your kids to learn through their mistakes,” she advises. “They still need reasonable boundaries, but at a certain point you have to let go.”

Knowing when to protect them and when to back off is often a matter of intuition, she adds.

And sometimes, says Huntington Beach therapist Ken Rhea, “it just boils down to prayer and faith.”

That’s what many parents fall back on when a responsible teen-ager asks to use the family car and they feel like saying, “No, you’ll kill yourself.”

Rhea advises parents in this situation to do everything possible to reassure themselves: Keep the car well-maintained, make sure your child gets plenty of practice behind the wheel, remind him or her to pay attention and use good judgment and talk to others who’ve survived this stage of parenting. Then turn over the keys to the car--and pray.

Every time kids venture out and return safely, it helps parents prepare to let go when their children are ready to move out and start building their own lives, Rhea says.

Don’t worry if that day doesn’t come as soon as your children reach voting age. “I hear parents say, ‘When the kid is 18, that’s it,’ but that’s not realistic anymore,” Rhea says. He says that, for economic reasons, many young people today live at home during college and that having that option improves their prospects for an independent future.

Rick Pullen, associate dean of the School of Communications at Cal State Fullerton, sympathizes with young adults whose parents are unable--or unwilling--to support them after high school. They feel “tremendous pressure” to earn a living, and many never make it to college, he says.

Pullen has raised his children--ages 22, 19 and 12--with the expectation that they would go away to college, but he had no idea how difficult letting go would be for him until he had to say goodby to his oldest daughter.

“I had a terrible time with that,” he admits, recalling several weeks of intense sorrow after his daughter went to a college near Santa Barbara.

But letting go was less wrenching the second time around, when his son left for UC Davis, “because I worked so hard over a period of time to deal with it.”

Adjusting to those separations would no doubt have been far more difficult for Pullen if he hadn’t gradually allowed more freedom as his older children earned his trust.

He says he had no serious problems with them during their teen years, perhaps because he and his wife “took a keen interest in their development” and always tried to be “firm but fair.”

Heinemann stresses that part of letting go while preparing children for adulthood is giving them clear boundaries and positive, consistent, loving discipline as well as a reasonable amount of freedom to learn from experience.

But that requires a level of commitment to parenting that, according to Heinemann, is often missing today.

“It takes a lot of energy to let your children make mistakes and watch it happen and be there with discipline. Most parents are preoccupied with their own lives. It’s much easier to turn your head than to stay with it.”

But there’s a big payoff for those who take the time to listen and offer encouragement and guidance--and then back off when it’s time for children to test their wings. The reward is the opportunity to forge a rich, new relationship with your children once they are grown.

But first you have to let go. As Heinemann says, “Friendship doesn’t start until parenting is over.”