Raising Kids, Then Letting Them Go (Sort Of)

When you’re knee-deep in the trenches of raising young children, you can’t imagine a world where you’re not the center of their universe. Then, somewhere around middle school, the spell breaks. Suddenly, they’re their own people—with opinions, tastes in music that don’t match yours, and an eye roll that could melt steel.

Fast forward a few decades, and your child isn’t just your kid anymore—they’re your adult child. You know, the kind who has an apartment, a career, and a schedule that makes it nearly impossible to find a good time to talk.

Our son lives on the opposite coast, where he spends his days as a software engineer and his free time dangling off cliffs for fun. So, when we recently managed a week together in Big Sky, Montana, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I treated it like a small miracle. Here’s what I learned:

👍 Be available. There’s no substitute for just… being there. I know this sounds obvious, but unstructured time together is its own kind of magic. We went from “Can you explain again how AI works?” to “Who do you think should be the next president?” in the same afternoon. That doesn’t happen over a scheduled 30-minute FaceTime.
👍 Match their rhythm. I wake up ready to go—pray, workout, go-go-go. He wakes up ready to go minus the conversation. On hiking days, we started at 5 a.m., and I quickly learned that 5 a.m. is not an appropriate time for questions or monologues. It is, however, a great time to listen to his music (he’s also a musician, because of course he is).
👍 Be flexible. I arrived with a detailed itinerary and dinner reservations every night. He preferred spontaneous exploration and online reviews. Guess whose restaurants were better? I’m still thinking about the homemade pasta with elk bolognese in a cozy trattoria who’s slogan is “You are a stranger here but once.”
👍 Meet them where they are. In hindsight, suggesting a National Parks trip to a rock climber was… optimistic. My idea was to plan something adventurous and bonding. I forgot that a) I’m older than the last time we adventured together, when we lived on a houseboat in the Amazon, and b) my hiking stamina now tops out around an hour. To his credit, he adjusted our plans without a hint of judgment. That alone was worth the trip.
👍 Let go of perfection. There are moments when you will absolutely annoy each other. It’s fine. That’s what families do. Talk it out, move on, and trust that the good moments will outweigh the awkward ones. They always do.

By the end of the week, I realized something both comforting and bittersweet: raising kids never really ends. It just changes shape. Sometimes it looks like holding a baby at 2 a.m., and sometimes it looks like eating elk bolognese with your grown son while he explains quantum computing. Either way, it’s still love—just with better scenery.