The Pain of Letting Go

“My husband had warned me on the day the first baby was born—‘Raising kids, hon, is one long letting go.’”—Ourselves and Our Children—A Book by and for Parents.

MOST parents are happy—even exhilarated—when their first child is born. Despite all the inconveniences, hassles, pains, frustrations, and anxieties parenthood brings, children can be a source of great joy. Some three thousand years ago, the Bible declared: “Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a real blessing.”—Psalm 127:3, Today’s English Version.

Nevertheless, the Bible also makes this sobering prediction: “A man will leave his father and his mother.” (Genesis 2:24) For a variety of reasons, grown-up children usually leave home—to pursue an education or a career, to expand their Christian ministry, to get married. But for some parents, this reality is simply too painful. They allow their children’s natural struggle for independence to cause them—as one writer put it—to “feel insulted, outraged, embarrassed, threatened or rejected.” This often translates into unending family strife and tension. Refusing to face the day their children will leave the nest, some parents fail to prepare them for adulthood. The harvest reaped from such neglect can be dreadful: adults who are ill-prepared to manage a home, care for a family, or even hold a job.

The pain of separation may be particularly acute in single-parent families. A single parent named Karen says: “My daughter and I are close; we developed a real bond of friendship. Everywhere I went, I took her.” Close parent-child relationships are common in single-parent households. Understandably, the thought of losing such closeness may be devastating.

However, the book Traits of a Healthy Family reminds parents: “That’s what family life is all about: the nurturing of a dependent infant into an adult who is his or her own person.” It then warns: “Many problems in families arise out of the parents’ inability to let go.”

What about you? Are you a parent? If so, are you prepared for the day when you will have to let your children go? And what about your children? Are you preparing them to make it on their own?