I was speaking with my daughter Sarah over a year ago and she asked  me if I would make an appointment for her with the doctor. She wasn’t sick, just a check up. I said sure and made the appointment for her on January 4, 2010 at 1:30 in the afternoon. That date just happened to be my birthday. When I called to tell her the date of the appointment she said to me “Isn’t there something else you would rather do on your birthday than take me to the doctor?” I responded by saying, “There isn’t anything else I’d rather do than spend time with you on my birthday.”  She kept insisting that I should reschedule the appointment, but I insisted it wasn’t a problem so she gave in and said okay, with another OKAY just for good measure. On another occasion I was visiting my sister and her husband with my children for the Christmas Holiday. Her and her husband gave me a wonderful gift: Two tickets to a New York Giants football game. What a gift. I put Sarah on the spot and asked her if she wanted to go, she reluctantly agreed. Then I thought what about Grace, my youngest daughter, can’t take one and not the other. I spoke to them on the way home telling them that I was going to take one of my good friends to the game, Mr. Olsen. To my surprise they both said yes please take Mr. Olsen and have a good time. Their tone was almost one of relief.

I love being around my kids. They mean the world to me. They make me happy. They are my best friends. But, I learned a very important lesson after these two events that almost slipped by me. My kids do not want to be responsible for my happiness; they want me to be happy on my own, with my own life, and my own activities. When our children are young they rely on us to teach them how to participate in activities that are fun and bring a sense of happiness and joy to their lives. As they grow older and more independent they learn how to discover these things on their own and need less and less of our help and honestly need our presence less and less. This begs the questions; do we as parents grow more or less dependent on our children as they grow older?  Did we as parents get so lost in the lives of our now grown children that we lost our own life and have diminished our ability to live independent of our children? We raised our children to function independent of us as parents. We raised our children to perform as adults in our absence. This is all done so unwittingly and so incrementally that parents don’t even see the dysfunction coming. They don’t see it coming until they have a parent who is 75 years old whose happiness has been measured over the years by the amount of time their children have spent with them. Parents, you know who you are, you feel such a responsibility to that elderly parent, and such guilt that your life is not your own. That dysfunction becomes normal for you; consequently you deal with your children the same way. No one grows up; we all remain children looking to others to be responsible for our happiness.

We should enjoy the presence of our children but we shouldn’t rely on it as our sole source of enjoyment. Our kids don’t want the responsibility of it. They want us to enjoy our spouse, a friend, or if you are divorced a male or female companion. Crushing your kids with phone calls, and demands for their company, or worse yet feeling guilty because you believe in some sick way that they constantly want or need you around is unfair to them and to you as the parent. Trust me when I tell you that your kids will never tell you, but as they grow older they won’t love you more they’ll resent you more. You will be waiting for the phone to ring, and will wish you knew how to deal with your time and your life. You will be wondering if they’re mad at you. The less they call, the more anger you will have toward them. When you die your kids won’t be bereaved they will be relieved. All because you didn’t know your place in the lives of your children.