Anatomy of an Anchor: Exploring a New Dimension to Parenting

by Leslee Tessmann

Parenting is difficult—to say the least. From the moment children emerge from their mother’s womb, the question is asked many times, “Would someone please give me the manual on how to raise my child? You know, the one with all the RIGHT answers to my questions.” The bad news is that there isn’t one—and the good news is that there isn’t one. Well, there are hundreds of books and opinions about what does and doesn’t work when it comes to parenting—from infancy to toddlerhood, to adolescence. But there isn’t necessarily a ‘right’ way to raise our children. There can’t possibly be because each child/parent relationship is unique, with its own set of circumstances, challenges, and lessons. So mostly we’re left with addressing the common issues we have ourselves—the doubt and fear we struggle with, the angst we experience when their lives don’t match our hopes or expectations, and the suffering we self-inflict by constantly berating ourselves for missing the mark in the past and not having a crystal ball that lets us peer into and solve our child’s future before it even happens.

As the parent of a 43-year-old, I am amazed that the lessons I learn from my daughter and her four children never cease to present themselves. Sometimes it’s a long time before I find my way to some resolution of a new issue, conflict, or dilemma. Sometimes the “aha” moment is mercifully quick and painless. More often than not, though, the lessons come slowly and painfully.

In the 21 or so years that our children evolve into adults, so does our parenting—as our lives and values ebb and shift, so do our thought processes, words, and actions. While honing and developing our own parenting skills, we are simultaneously letting go of our parents’ values and parenting styles and forging our way toward new patterns of communicating and interacting with our adult children. This process can be an amazing, magical, even beautiful transformational process. It can also be extremely frustrating, challenging, confusing, annoying, and painful.

Our emotional attachments to our children run as deep as the ocean—fueled by endless ebbs and flows, sometimes clear and bright with hope for the future; yet often dark and murky, muddied by today’s dramas and yesterday’s traumas. We will always be the parent and they will always be the child—not in the sense of an innocent infant or curious toddler, but as our offspring, legacy, and living expression of a desire that their lives have less pain and more joy than ours. Unfortunately, life isn’t always that accommodating. It takes unexpected twists and turns that offer both rocky and smooth paths for our grown children—paths that distract and confuse us when situations challenge us to behave and think differently, process differently, do and say less, and ‘be’ more.

Unfortunately, as much as our adult children would like it, there is no magical switch that can be flicked to the off position and have us stop parenting. We don’t have the luxury to not care or worry about our children. Parents are not wired that way. No matter how well they’re doing, or how much we live our own lives and explore our own interests and passions, our innate desire to be connected to our grown children remains steadfast—like an anchor. Not hard and impenetrable, but a living and breathing tether that passively provides the stability and security that we actively provided when they younger. Much of this phase of our parenting effort is unseen or unspoken. It happens often in the subtle ways of role modeling: communication, affection, intimacy, respect, self-esteem, confidence, spirituality, work ethics, financial values, and family values. The list is long, and all of it—both the healthy and not so healthy—gets acted out in our own lives and then frequently re-enactedin the lives of our grown children.

Observing our sons and daughters bumping up against values that may or may not work in their lives can be painful. The desire and urge to give advice, offer opinions, and step in and solve what we foresee as a problem can be overwhelming. However, the most destructive thing we can do for our grown children is not allow them the dignity, process, and time to create their own lives, based on values and standards they come to respect and claim as their own. Yet the heartache of watching the unfolding of a life that is plagued by drug or alcohol addiction