I just would want to encourage mothers and fathers who are going through this and seeing it in their window that it's coming that the best is yet to come. That letting go of your children and helping them become confident adults is the bridge to the very best season of parenting and that is to be friends with your adult children. That's Carol Kuykendall and she's with us today on Focus on the Family along with her daughter-in-law Alexandra Kuykendall and your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. John, when your oldest Dakota left home, how did that make you feel?
Oh man, it snuck up on me. I was so excited for him. We got to the airport because he flew to the school he was going to and I was so happy for him. The sense of dread came over me as well because I realized I'm saying goodbye to him right now. I'm always going to be saying goodbye to him in some capacity. He's never going to come back and just it's never going to be the same. So it was a really mixed emotions.
I think that's the way it is. I mean, it's happy and sad all at the same time. I remember Trent moving out. He moved into some college apartments last year and yeah, it was really crazy just feeling that you're on your own now. I mean, we're here for you, but you know, you're excited, but also right. But it is a moment.
It's a demarcation of a change in the relationship and hopefully the things that you've done to pour into that child, whether it's a son or a daughter, that the fruit of that is going to take root. And I'm really proud of Trent. I think he's done a great job and Troy's still at home. He's doing a gap year. So we're going to be working on that over the next year or two and see where he's going to go to college or do something vocationally. So we're looking forward to it. But, um, I think this speaks to so many parents today because you, especially moms, if I could speak directly to you watching Jean in this, I mean, you're doing everything as that little child grows and you're taking care of that little baby and then elementary school and junior high and high school and all those things that you got to do to comfort that son or daughter. And then the day comes, they're walking out the door and so many moms, you know, you can wrap your identity around being that mom and now you're going to move to an adult adult relationship and it's tough, but we're going to discuss that today with two very good guests. Yeah, we have some really practical insights into this phase of life when you launch your teens into the adult world. And Carol Kirkendall has raised and launched three adults. Her son married her daughter-in-law who's with us, Alexandra and Alexandra and her husband have recently sent their oldest off. And so, uh, I think it's kind of a fresh topic.
Yeah. So both of these ladies are quite accomplished. They've written a number of books today. We're talking about one that is written by Carol and it's called give them wings, preparing for the time your teen leaves home. It's a terrific resource.
Get a copy from us here at focus on the family. The details are in the episode notes, Carol and Alex. Welcome to focus again.
Oh, thank you. It's been a while Carol, since you've been here, but it's great to have you back and let's get into it because we only have a few minutes. So, you know, when a child moves out of the home, whether it's to go to college or start their vocational, uh, future, it's exciting and it is frightening kind of what John and I were bantering about a moment ago. Why did those feelings hit us? So suddenly we know it's coming. I mean, it's going to be 18, 19, roughly. It might have some light bloomers that have to hang on for economic reasons, but 18, 1920, they're pretty much going to be out of the house. So why, why is it a sudden shock to us as parents?
Well, I think that we do see it coming. There are pivot points all the way along. Like the first time your child goes to preschool, that that's a pivot. No, you go with the child.
That's what Jean did. We went to be volunteers. Or the first time you leave your baby in the church, uh, nursery, uh, you know, so you do have those flashes of it, but I think when a child gets to high school age, I, I call high school the home stretch of parenting. And uh, there are lots of, lots of pivot points and getting a driver's license and getting the phone that probably came earlier, but all those things that give them more responsibility that are adult responsibilities. So I really felt it mostly through high school. It just felt like this is the road you're on. And what is real is that your family will be changed forever. Now that doesn't mean it won't get good.
It will get good. But it's that moment that you realize, I mean, I remember walking into the kitchen when Derek was just eating a cereal at the breakfast bar. And this is Alex's husband, right? Yes.
Yes. I know that makes it sort of awkward. It's not right. But this is back when he was still eating cereal in high school, at the kitchen counter. And I just suddenly started crying because I realized that would be a hole in the setting for the rest of.
Okay. Did you freak him out starting to cry? No, it actually was a tender moment because I walked over and gave him a hug and said, I'm sorry, I just sometimes have to hug you.
And he said, I know mom. Well that's, that's really the next question, which is, you know, letting go is actually a good thing, but it can be so hard. I think too, I'm sure every generation feels this where you're saying, you know, to let my child go in this culture with all the problems. I'm sure that was true of the sixties and seventies and the eighties and you get the picture, but there is that fear, if I could call it that, that you're letting your, your little baby go into this brutal world, but, but they've got to do it.
I mean, you can't smother them, right, Alex? Yeah. It's trusting that God has gone before them, that God is with them and it is scary. You just open your phone or look at the headlines and you know this world is a scary place. And that panic you can feel in that moment where you're saying goodbye of, did we do enough? Did we prepare this child enough? And I think for parents, yes and no, because we've all done the best we could do. And we've been faithful in planting seeds of truth and hope in them. And we have to trust God to work in them as they go out into the world.
And you can always do more. So there's that feeling of yes and no, and trusting God in that as you let me get that out in the discussion quickly so that moms and dads can put themselves at ease. I think Jean and I have talked about this boy, if we could have a do over, we would be such better parents in so many ways. And I think most earnest parents would say that you don't do everything perfectly. It's the first time you've done this. It's the first time you've learned to let go. You may not do it well. We're here to encourage you to do it well.
But speak to that, Carol. What were some of the things that you learned in that letting go experience that parents right now that have high school kids need to hear? Well, you're unfinished when they leave home. And that's a reality that the application of what they've learned is now going to have an opportunity to be put in practice.
And so the first year for someone who leaves home, I think they're learning more than they learned their senior year in high school, because they're having to apply it in a way that's very different from when you're at home. And you do have parents. Yeah, like pay the electric bill. Yes. Let's just start with that one. The phone bill, what have you.
Yeah, I know. And that I can find what I need by going to the refrigerator or the the cupboard. So you mean somebody has to put that stuff in the fridge? Yes. So to say that your your son went to his first rental home, is that what it is?
Yeah, well, originally, now he's renting from a friend. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. But then they do have to start figuring all those more adults type responsibilities. So which, again, is part of the process.
Yes, is part of the process. And I just think for the family at home, it just feels hard to recognize that we're going to be different. And I pictured one of those children's mobiles that hangs over a crib. And if you pull one of the characters out of that, I mean, it just goes like this unbalanced, it's totally unbalanced, but it comes back to a place of settlement.
And what we all learn is that we get better at home, and they get better away from home. Carol, in fact, with Derek, Alex's husband, you said in the book, God gave you one question. Yeah, what was the question? Well, if I'm referring to the what you're referring to, I was really mad at God that he had given us family. And we really tried to love each other the way that he tells us to love each other. And then you take someone away.
Why is that the way the plan for a family? And I realized, in perspective, that he doesn't take a child away, he changes the shape of a family. Yeah. And so that helped me. But I have a feeling you might have had a different question.
No, that's it. I think the thing that you referred to a little while ago, those pivot points, let me come to you, Alex, and ask you in those pivot points, I think, you know, there's obvious ones, you send them off to school. That's a big one. The license is a big one.
Their cell phone is a big one. What are some of those other pivot points that you notice with your kids? Yeah, we're at all kinds of stages, because we have a 10 year old, a 12 year old, a 16 year old, and a 19 year old, good planning.
All everyone is in a process of letting go in. Well, as parents, we're letting go in different ways. And we have to pick age appropriate ways for them to separate from us and for us to give them more responsibility. So just this month, we had our 16 year old decided she didn't want to try out for the high school soccer team. And we as parents were disappointed because she's a great athlete, we thought it would be good for her. But she had reasons why she didn't want to. And we decided as parents, okay, you're at an age where this is a decision that is up to you. And we will support you either way, even though we had opinions that were different from the decision she was going to make.
It wasn't a safety issue. So we could allow her to have that space to make that decision. And then we also had some parameters around, okay, this is how you need to use your time if you're not going to be using it this way.
So we were still guiding her in that. But to allow our kids to make decisions that are bigger and bigger as they get older, has been a learning process. Well, and you're reinforcing critical things that parents need to do at that point of adolescence. You know, I think we had Dr. Ken Wilgus on the program, he wrote a really good book called feeding the mouth that bite you emancipate your teenagers.
I love the title. But his whole point there is you hand over responsibility in those teen years, and you don't take it back. So that's, you know, they got to get the room clean, they got to do whatever they need to start functioning as adults before they leave the home so that they can function as adults when they leave the home. Yeah, and that's hard for me. Because as a mom, I want to take care of my kids.
I love doing it. And I know that the time is limited. So with our oldest daughter, she left for college in the fall that her whole senior year, I kept thinking, this is the last time I'll have a chance to do this for her. So I'm happy to do it for her. And my husband was a little bit more like, you need to stop doing that for her so that she can practice while she's at home and we can coach her how to do some of these practical things. So sometimes in a family too, there's a parent who's a little more willing to step in and do things for kids that they can do themselves. And another parent who's a little more, let's push them to work towards independence.
And sometimes it's that mom-dad dynamic. Well, we all seem to come from big families or have big families like you do. I think there's a difference with birth order too. John, you're firstborn.
I am. I'm a lastborn. But I think firstborns get a lot of that attention, right? Parents are jumping in.
It's the first time we clean up the nook. Every time it falls out of their mouth, we wash it off. But the lastborns, like me, I mean, parents are like, whatever. There is a difference there. It's like you fend for yourself.
You know, I'm three years old making my own hot dogs. But there is some of that to the birth order. Have you found that to be true? Oh, yes. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. My mother used to say, you have to throw away the first one because you just don't do everything. Sorry, John. I didn't mean that. But it is true that you learn. You learn from the experience. And it's a good thing because raising children, you have to constantly change the way you love them and show your love for them.
And you have to stop at those pivot points. That's where it's a good place to say, what are we going to do with the they're getting a phone? What's the responsibility?
What are the new rules that we check in with that? So we're always changing changing the way that we love our children. In fact, in the book, you mentioned planting seeds, that's God's responsibility. Ours is to nurture the seeds.
I could think of that in both directions, but explain more what you're getting at. Well, being a woman who was blessed to have three children from pregnancy, I have a great deal of respect for the Creator's role in that, and allowing me to be part of a miracle that I will remember for the rest of my life that. So when he's knitting together this baby, and within a mother, I believe he's planting seeds, and that we are trying to find who he made this child to be, and respecting that and parenting in a way that helps to grow those seeds. And that they're different, you know, the children we have are all different. So we have to be the tiller of the soil, to use the right kind of fertilizer, and really encourage this child to become who God made. Well, I like that reinforcement and knowing each child uniquely, because there isn't blanket parenting, you can't just use an approach.
I mean, you got to know your kids well enough to know they're bent, just like the scripture says, and to train them and raise them up in the admonition of the Lord. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and today our guests are Carol Kuykendall and Alex Kuykendall. And Carol has written a book, Give Them Wings. It's a Focus on the Family resource, and we'd be happy to tell you more. Stop by the episode notes for the details, or give us a call, 800, the letter A in the word family.
Alex, let me direct this one to you. Trent, my oldest, who's now 21, he said something the other day that caught my attention. It was really kind, but he said, you know, Dad, it's just so fun to see our relationship blossom into like adult-adult discussion. I thought that was really cool that he notices I'm trying very hard to treat him differently now that he's out on his own, and it changes. Your daughter's kind of in that same age range as Trent, so have you had that experience where, I guess, twofold. One, the relationship is different, and then how do we, as mom and dad, relate to our children in that different time of life? Yeah, the relationship is different, and if we try to hold on to it being the same, it's just not going to go well because they know it's different.
They've changed, and we've changed as they've left the house. I've heard it said that kind of the young adult years are coaching years. If you put on the role of coach, then you're coming alongside a person, a young person, and saying, I see you doing this well.
This is really great, and have you considered trying it this way? And those gentle coaching approaches, rather than the parental authority approach, works better because it's age-appropriate, and so that has helped me, just even that term, coach, has helped me as a mom say, okay, am I coaching her, or am I trying to over-parent her? And I think it's really important to have open discussion about that. I remember talking to Trent and asking him, how do you want to move forward?
If I notice something, do you want me to just tell you, or how do you want me to approach this? And he said, yeah, I definitely want you to have permission to speak into my life, and it's just good to have that open dialogue with them, and to say, you know, things are changing. You're now on your own. I got to see you differently. You're not just my son. You'll always be my son, but now you're an adult, and I've got to look at you differently.
So how do you want me to, you know, talk with you in those ways? So I would just ask. Yeah, and I think for parents, when kids come back for Christmas break or summer break, there's that adjustment period of they've had all this freedom, and you're not used to them having all of this freedom while they've been at home.
Isn't that the truth? And so having an honest conversation there too, and the way we've approached it, especially as she was a senior, and we knew she was starting to get ready to leave the home, and then as she's come home to say, we still worry about you. So consider as your housemates, be as respectful as you would with your housemates, as far as letting us know what time you expect to be home.
Text me when you get home so that if I wake up at three o'clock in the morning, I know that you're home. I don't have to get up and check your room kind of thing. But I think having that expectation early on and then modeling, I don't stay out till all hours of the night, not tell daddy.
Like he knows where I am. It's that respect that we also model as other adults in the house. And I think, of course, some parents are going, well, you don't have my son, you don't have my daughter. We realize that there's going to be some difficulty in some of those relationships and things are going on and culture has grabbed your child and you're trying to cope with that. And you have to apply a different parenting approach. We're kind of generally talking about just the normal household where someone's left and they're coming back for the weekend and how are you going to treat them? So, Carol, let me ask you when Derek, who is your oldest and is Alex's husband, again, I'll keep telling everybody, but what was that experience for you when you, you know, from high school that summer and then you drove him to college?
Oh, gosh, the summer before they leave is a mother's time where we want, we should do everything together. This could be the last time that we were going to church together in the same car, whatever. And a mother and parents, I think, get really intense about and emotional and emotional, but intense about family things. And this is a child who is trying desperately to separate emotionally. I'm an adult. I don't want to get in the car.
I want to drive myself, that kind of thing. And we just had to really be aware that our purposes were very different. And we were going, we packed up the car. This was going to be a family trip to take him to college. And so we were just squished into a car with all of his things. And I just had all these visions of here we are together in the car.
We're going to give him all the information we might have forgotten along the way. Sure. Look at that open field. We can go walk in and have lunch out there and a picnic.
Yes, a picnic together. And pray, pray, pray. You'll lead us in prayer. And what happened? Oh, God. It was not good. They all put on, they at that point had earphones that they could listen to, headsets. And they all got into their own worlds. And it was mom and dad sitting in the front seat just going, you know, and really saying goodbye at a college campus. I encourage parents to really do their important times and moments before they get to the campus when everything is crazy and they are out of sorts. They just want to get on with it. Don't want to say goodbye.
So they're just going to try to get rid of that. And go have one nice meal out the night before you move in if you've taken them to college campus. And then whatever you want to say to them, say before the last moment, because we were all in Derek's room. And he looked at his watch and he said, Oh, my gosh, I got a meeting. And he ran. I mean, we just barely had and you're about to tell him all the meaning.
Oh, yeah. I was ready to pray and be really and we we'd lost that moment because in retrospect, I know that is the way he needed to do it. He needed to leave and he needed to be the one walking out. And so when we got to the second one, Lindsay that we took to college, Derek was with us because we were dropping her off first and then taking him back to his college campus. And he said, as we were getting ready for that goodbye, he said, let her walk away.
Don't we walk away? So he it confirmed that he needed that. That was how he wanted to say goodbye. And he thought it would be easier for Lindsay to to walk away rather than her watching us walk away.
Yeah, that's good. Alex, you had that kind of experience, I think, taking your daughter to college, right? You had the plan and then what?
Yeah, right. Well, we wanted to have that special dinner the night before. And we're a family of six, we sometimes forget we don't eat out very often with all six of us, we forget we can't just walk into a big table restaurant and say we're here and we're ready to be served. So we walked into a restaurant in our neighborhood. And it was full, it was booked. And it was the place she wanted to go. And we'd had a plan and the plan was falling apart. But emotions were so high because we were taking her the next morning to campus. And so we ended up sitting in the parking lot in the car, people were cranky, she was anxious to get this dumb dinner because she had things to do. And we as parents were so emotional. And we just had to take a collective deep breath and say, okay, this isn't turning out the way we thought it was going to. So what's our plan B, go to plan B, try to do it quickly.
And drive through. No, we did go sit down somewhere. But there are so many moments where you picture how it's going to go. And then it doesn't go that way. And that's parenting, right? We pictured it was going to go this way, it doesn't go this way. So we're going to go on to plan B, and to be prepared for that in this whole process of a young person leaving home, whether they're going to college, or they're moving out, they're joining the military, whatever it is, to have an idea of how you'd like it to go and to hold those plans loosely.
Yeah, that is great advice. Let's in the last couple minutes here, let's just talk about the grief process, because there is a grieving in the loss of your child, that little kindergartener, you know, and you have to you have to deal with it to be healthy, I think. And so, Carol, you talked about that empty nest transition when the last one leaves. And how did God teach you about grieving that loss? Well, I had two other attempts or rehearsals with the grief. So learning to process it with especially other moms, because we we seem to have a more alike response.
Yeah, there's connectedness. Yes, but with your husband, too, because that's a very important time in a marriage. And we talked about it long before we took the last one to college. And so we were more ready for it, because we'd done it slowly.
And that was the final one. So I think being aware that your marriage is going to change, and you're going to go through different responses. At first, it was just great fun. You know, we didn't have to go get the right kind of food for the one who wanted this or this or this.
We had a great, a great feeling of freedom ourselves. And actually, it came more further down the road when we realized, gosh, we really miss loving someone together that's right here. And that was an important part of our marriage is loving someone together. That's when we got a dog.
And truly, you know, for a marriage that that does that well together, loving something someone together. That's a very helpful change. Yeah.
Well, this has been great. I mean, so many bits and pieces of wisdom to guide that transition time. And I think that the biggest thing is try to be that cheerleader.
What you said a moment ago, don't hang on to the five year old that was so adorable. But you're now cheering that young adult on into a pretty aggressive world. And they're going to need to know who they are. Hopefully, that work's been done that they have identity in Christ. And they know where they're driving.
And whatever they're stepping into, they have confidence to do it. And really, Mom and Dad, you play the role in establishing that kind of foundation. But what a great resource, give them wings. I think it's a wonderful resource for every parent to have. And you can get that directly here from Focus on the Family. And I would encourage you to get involved with the ministry if you can make a gift of any amount or maybe become a monthly sustainer. We'll send a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for helping others through Focus on the Family.
Yeah, donate as you can today and request your book. The link is in the episode notes or give us a call. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.
I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. Messing up at school can be embarrassing, but Average Boy's used to it. He tries, fails, and tries again thanks to help from his friends Billy, Jenny, and Sarah. Join Average Boy in his very first fun-filled novel called Average Boy's Above Average Year. He deals with bullies, homework, and more while following God and showing God's love to others. Check out this book perfect for the 8 to 12 year olds in your life at averageboy.org. That's averageboy.org.
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