Learning to Let Go of Our Kids

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Meghan Cox Gurdon writes about preparing for the day when our children are ready to leave home.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Meghan Cox Gurdon writes about preparing for the day when our children are ready to leave home:

Every morning recently ... a boy has walked past our house on his way to work. "Boy" is perhaps the wrong term for a fellow with almost a full beard, but when you've known a child since he was a third-grader it's sometimes hard to adjust.

This young man has a real job this summer. Like any normal salaried worker, he gets up before he wants to, puts on a suit and tie, catches the bus, and spends his day under artificial lighting. What is he doing, if not running a dress rehearsal for adult life?

His parents, meanwhile, are rehearsing too. They're practicing for the time when he is self-supporting, off in his own life, and no longer answerable to them.

A curious nostalgic silence prevails, meanwhile, in the houses of people who have exported their children either to sleep-away camp or to distant grandparents.