Thursday, June 23, 2005

Parenting, adult-style

Like so many of our generation, we've got an adult child living with us for a while until she gets her finances and self together. Our youngest princess, she is the only one who was with both of us as a teenager.

So we're all trying to find a balance to everyday life -- she, on her own pretty much for the last five years, is trying to figure out parents who have changed nearly every aspect of our lives since she last lived with us, and with tremendous geographic and emotional changes. We are trying to share the slower-paced country life we have now, realizing that she's always been a city kid, and adjusting to the less private lifestyle (no more skinnydipping in the hot tub). It's a challenge on some days for each of us.

Partly it's finding out how to react to each other: we are not the same people she left in oh so many ways, and she is no longer 16 or 17. We do not always like her choices, but when it is not a matter of personal safety or infringement on our basic boundaries, it's time to shut up, and for opinionated people, that's a tall order! Some previous hot buttons are, we're finding, still hot on both sides.

Still, we believe this is a good move for her, and she agrees or she'd not be here. We'll figure out how to deal with the I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it stresses, and the I'm-not-used-to-being-talked-back-to ones. We ARE all adults, in various stages of maturity, and maybe we'll all just hone that a little more.