Kids grow up extremely fast. It can feel like a few short weeks before your baby is walking all of a sudden (even though it typically takes a year or so to reach that milestone), and in what feels like a few short months, your child will already be off starting pre-school or kindergarten.
Although you may love seeing your kids grow up in front of your very eyes, eventually you will reach that point where you feel like the are growing too fast. You start to realize that your child will soon be out of the house living their own lives away from you, and it will happen sooner than you want. And in fact, most parents really want their children to never grow, simply because growing up eventually means leaving you physically. There’s no wonder that a lot of parents are so willing to let their children continue living with them in their house, even after they have graduated from college and should technically be looking for a place of their own. The longer you can stay with your children, the better you feel.
However, this strategy cannot go on indefinitely. Even for parents who let their children live with them into their twenties and even thirties, a line must be drawn. A large part of this is due to the fact that once you do leave this world for good, your child very likely will not be capable of living on their own. Instead of having someone always there to do their laundry and cook them lunch and dinner every day, they will suddenly need to fend for themselves, which can often be too much for them. If you are a good parent, you most definitely do not want to be leaving your children in such a situation that could have a direct impact on their lasting health, making it imperative that you let them leave the nest sooner rather than later, as counterintuitive as that may seem from an emotional standpoint.
So where does that leave you as a parent? If you are a good parent, you know that the clock is ticking before you allow (or in some cases force) your child to leave the nest. And when that happens, you will undoubtedly be missing out on a huge part of your life, a part that was with you for 18 years. So instead of dreading that day when it inevitably will come, instead focus on the time that you do still have with your kids. Whether they are still crawling or are an unruly high school teenager who barely wants anything to do with you, make every memory that you can with them as humanely possible. In this way, even if they are gone from your house physically, they will always be there with you in spirit through the cherished memories that you have created with them.