How do parents remain balanced while watching their teen take flight?
(1) Keep your feet on the ground. Connect with nature. It may be your best antidote to the wild, risk-taking teen. I take daily walks around a nearby pond. It nourishes my senses and give me balance.
(2) Be patient. Take things slowly. Fruit that is harvested too soon is bitter and hard, but given the opportunity to ripen, its inborn sweetness emerges. Your teen is likewise ripening and maturing. Don’t hurry the process. Surrender to this time. Relax and try to have fun with your teen. If you make a mistake, learn from it.
(3) Protect yourself. As parents, sometimes it’s best to withdraw into our shells and wait out the siege. Later, we can take action to prevent it from happening again.
(4) Rest. The passage to adulthood is arduous for your teen — and fatiguing for you. Rest is essential for parents. Step out of the way and refocus on yourself. Take breaks, even vacations, from your teens.
(5) Let the lessons of tai chi inform your parenting! Lead by letting teens follow their own nature and be their own guides. Step back and allow negative force to pass by you, then return love. Conserve your energy for when you really need it.
Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski has taught at 8 universities, now at Northwestern University and Loyola University in Chicago. She is an award-winning author of 6 books, 3 on families and 3 on leadership, including her newest, Becoming A Happy Family: Pathways to the Family Soul (2015), and her best-selling, The Sacred Flight of the Teenager: A Parent’s Guide to Stepping Back and Letting Go, which was released (2019) in Egypt in Arabic. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she has researched extensively how children learn social skills and teens become leaders. A frequent radio and television guest, she has appeared on "The Today Show" and speaks regularly to parents and educators. Listed in Who's Who in the World for 12 years and an International Fellow of Columbia University, her 35 years of college teaching and research have made her an expert on issues devoted to the contemporary family.
