Flipping through the greeting cards at Target, I bumped into this one…

“I saw Mom at the store today. (I sure hope she didn’t see me!”)

We’ve all been ‘that mom’ from time to time (I’ll be the first one to raise my guilty hand), but I’m here to say, we can choose a better way, as we gain insight into what builds camaraderie versus what repels our children from us.

We don’t have to perpetuate the problem of the breakdown of generational relationships. Period.

But it takes a lot of wisdom and intentional effort on a daily basis to become the kind of parent our adult kids want to be around.

This time of year always takes me back to this moment…

My son.

He was becoming less mine and more his own in this season.
He rarely needed me anymore.

We hold our breath as we sense this shift.

How could I stay connected to this amazing young man?
How could I nurture our friendship as adults?

His diligent efforts as a home schooler had landed him a full scholarship to the premier cosmetology school in our city to achieve his dream of becoming a hair stylist at age 16. His flexible schedule allowed him to pursue his passion full time and expedite his licensing.

He casually mentioned they were having a dress-up day for Halloween at the student-run salon on campus.
As he created his ingenious Mad Hatter costume pictured above, (awesome, right??!) I had a thought.

I, too, would dress up and surprise him at school that day!
And so I did.

I remember getting lost on the California freeways – sooo hopelessly lost…most intelligent adults would have given up and gone home.

Not me!
I don’t give up.

He literally did not recognize me and dismissed me as a client. #winning

He walked right past me with his cluster of fellow students as they returned from grabbing snacks at the nearby 7-11.

(No, I didn’t mention the Dr. Pepper he was holding was crap and would tank his immune system within 15 minutes, and that he shouldn’t be drinking it with those blasted poison GMO non-food taco-flavored Doritos, and that Halloween was the devil’s holiday, and that I smelled cigarettes. Nope.)

Such ‘wisdom’ is better left unsaid in this season of transition, as our children become adults. (I’m laughing out loud right now!)

Oh, how much I’ve learned as a mother of adult children. 
And I’m so glad I’ve employed it (umm…most of the time), because my children don’t hide from me now that they’re grown.

No, my journey of parenting adults hasn’t been Easy Street, but I’ve determined to glean the treasure in it all, win the battles and live to see the dreams God has put in my heart.

(And I always make sure to take really good notes when I’m in the school of hard knocks!)

I’d love to share my notes with YOU because on the other side of my inner battles, I believe I can help you navigate this transition to parenting your adult kids so you, too, can enjoy more peace, better sleep, less guilt and painful regret while fostering healthy friendships with your grown-up kids.

I don’t share fancy pants platitudes and religious blah blah blah. I believe in super practical, easily actionable advice. And I’ve got some hard-earned wisdom I can hardly wait to share with you!

Join me HERE!

Got millennials? You’ll get me…

If you’re parenting young adults at the moment, here’s an article I think you’ll enjoy. Tears in My Coffee…

Taylor Ransom creates and acts in this Halloween parody – a brilliant, sometimes stinging, satirical sketch that most likely has its roots in his childhood as a church kid.

I’m rolling…

PS – Love the post? Subscribe for lots more parenting inspiration and grab your free gift here!

I have to ask, how are we assessing our kids? A proper assessment assures us we’re on the right track as we aim our children toward their destinies.

When my sons were growing up, most schools administered broad assessment tests once toward the end of the year, while report cards went out quarterly. I never put a lot of stock in what the S.A.T., C.A.T or the I.T.B.S said about my kids. They always tested acceptably on these, but the scores didn’t carry a lot of weight with me.

In our home, their progress was monitored daily and their character assessed relentlessly; those were the tests I was concerned about. I didn’t care if they’d read every book that Nietzsche or Darwin had written and memorized it backwards. It didn’t matter if they’d been invited to honors classes. At the end of the day, from my perspective all that stuff was meaningless if there wasn’t character, integrity, and world-changing purpose in their lives.

I found it necessary to continually resist the standards set by popular culture as they related to my five sons. Often the world’s perspective was diametrically opposed to how I viewed true success for my boys.

If my children didn’t possess prized qualities of distinction like perseverance, respect for authority, quick obedience, faithfulness, and a solid work ethic, then what kind of impact could they possibly have in our world?

If they didn’t display active compassion to the hurting, and think outside of the tiny box of their own personal happiness, then in actuality, no matter what the test scores told me, I would have failed to produce a successful man.

John Taylor Gatto, former public school educator and prolific author, had this to say about the children he taught for three decades in the public system:

“The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. The children I teach have almost no curiosity. The children I teach are cruel to each other; they lack compassion for misfortune; they laugh at weakness; they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly. The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges.” *

This assessment is troubling. How many educated children of our day would be similar? That is a specimen you and I don’t want to produce. A person who is highly educated, but without character, is an educated idiot. God knows there are more than enough of them populating the earth as it is. Many of them teach at our universities.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Education is important. In fact, it’s so important to me that I labored long and hard educating my children for over 20 years. I took their life preparation very seriously, but all my eggs weren’t in the academic basket.

This world’s system of assessing our children is based on their good looks, athletic prowess, personal charisma, academic standing, fine arts talent, and so on. This information is collected and used to compare our kids with others their age. Comparisons are often destructive and can prove to be a death knell to us and our children. And although a child may excel in any or all of these categories, he may still greatly lack true substance in his life.

Sadly enough, grandparents, educators, and adult friends aren’t always a good litmus test either. Depending on what their basis for evaluation is, they might be out in left field in their assessment of your child.

I’m not endorsing lone-ranger parents with an independent spirit, but I am saying the buck stops with you. You have to own the responsibility of knowing your child, assessing your child through the lens of your values, gathering wisdom from those you deeply respect and applying it appropriately to your unique situation.

This isn’t a one-size-fits-all microwave-speed method of child rearing, because, trust me, you don’t want a one-size-fits-all microwave-speed method for your little miracle who is as unique and set apart as his or her own fingerprint indicates.

*Gatto, John T. Dumbing Us Down (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992), pp. 30–32.