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Health & Fitness

Genius

Learning to let our kids fly solo.

Remember when we were geniuses? No matter how feeble our answers may have been to our toddlers' continuous string of questions, they never doubted, just asked another, and another. If we were lucky, we remained brilliant well into their grammar school years.

Then one morning, without warning, as we roused our preteens out of bed for seventh grade, all manner of reasonable and intelligent thought we once possessed vanished. Our blossoming offspring not only rejected our every opinion, view or value, but their civics teacher, or their friend's cousin, or the guy at the video store had a far more enlightened opinion, view or value, and if only we weren't so closed minded, we could easily recognize how wrong-headed our own thinking was.

Around their mid-20s, after said youth had been out on their own for a few years, they began to appreciate the wisdom that comes with age. Again, they looked to us for advice on myriad life lessons. It's no coincidence that this epiphany often preceded a request for assistance. Their rent was due, their beater needed new brakes, their best buddy needed bail money. The list was endless.

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But by the time the kids reach their thirties, it seems, they feel they have learned enough from their life experience to fly solo. They no longer have any use or patience for the ramblings of mom and dad, now well into middle age and fast approaching senility. They remind us that they are perfectly capable of finding a good dentist, plumber or summer camp without our input.

This stage can be tough for parents to accept. After all, for the better part of our adulthood, besides providing the little darlings with food, shelter, clothing, and the latest game system, our primary purpose in life was to shelter them from the evils of the world. Our instinct to protect them from the mistakes we made never wanes. To this end, we long to provide them with every shred of data we have picked up from our vast cadre of resources – hours of web research, Patch.com, O Magazine, Anderson Cooper, the ladies of The View, Penny Warner's latest book, and the holy trinity of daytime TV - Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and Nate Berkus. 

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But as we watch our curious toddlers mature, we must acknowledge that, (to quote Austin, my good friend, and invaluable resource) at some point our kids become something called "adults."  And while our motives may be noble, there comes a time to scale back on the unsolicited sharing of our opinions, views and values. 

We must believe that while they were in our charge, we equipped our children with all the tools they need to make their own decisions, and yes, survive their own mistakes, as we did.

And if luck finds us a second time, a new generation of little ones will come along. Then we can sit back and enjoy watching our kids become geniuses.   

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