Learning How to Parent Adults
On the twins 21st birthday
Hi Soul Minimalist!
I’m thinking today of those of us who aren’t done celebrating after New Year’s day because of first-of-the-year birthdays and anniversaries. (Are we exhausted? Yes we are!) Our twins turned 21 today so we are still in party mode around here.
If you can relate, the last and first few weeks of the year are more full than they are for most and, depending on your personality, you either look forward to these weeks all year or you secretly dread them just a little bit (or a lot, maybe).
We work hard to make the birthday feel distinct from the holiday and to accept the reality that we’re just going to be more tired and overstimulated by now than we wish we were. The phrase I dislike but comes up in my mind anyway: it is what it is.
Because twenty-one years ago at this very moment, I was in labor with twins. We had been actively trying to keep labor at bay for many weeks, but in the late hours of the first day of the year, as I watched Hope Floats alone in my hospital room after a week of bedrest, it became clear that they would wait no longer. They came into the world in the early morning hours of January 2, seven weeks before their due date.
I hardly ever write about parenting for a lot of reasons but if you want to know the actual truth, I don’t enjoy writing about it. It’s personal, nuanced, individual, and always changing.
Deep down it may also be somewhat of a quiet rebellion against the authors and leaders who I read in my early years of parenting who wrote about it with such certainty and arrogance; the ones who implied there was a right way and a wrong way to raise your kids. And if you did it “right”, they would turn out in very particular ways.
Plus it’s really difficult to write about parenting and not disclose things about your kids stories that are not ours to disclose. So I just stay all the way back from it most of the time.
But every now and then, I have a few things to say. Today, while I’m reflecting on the last 21 years of my parenting life, it seems like a good time to say them.
If you're new here, my husband John and I have three kids: twins who turned 21 today and a son who is 18, a senior in high school. We've survived a lot, as every parent of adult-ish kids can say, but we're always learning what it means to parent in every new stage we enter.
Here are 21 things I’ve learned about parenting for 21 years:
I rarely regret saying too little but often regret saying too much. When in doubt, pause.
Almost everything is a season. It won’t always be like this. That’s true for the terrible times and the wonderful times alike.
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