Redefining roles

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Getting to know your grown children is a separate exercise from raising them. You are no longer in the same situation and the dynamics have changed with the balance of power which used to give you certain rights to intervene now almost depleted. The differences are now laid bare before you and you realize how unique they are as individuals and even question whether you would be friends with them if you were not their parent and the same age.

We don’t own our children, but we borrow them and look after them for a time until it is their turn to run free in the world; hopefully without the assistance of a net. If we have done our job right, they will leave and years later remember us with fondness and appreciate what we tried to do for them as steeped in imperfection as it was.

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