Children

No matter how old they are, as a parent, the number one thing that you do is worry.

You worry when they are young if they are going to fall down and get hurt or run into the street without looking, worry that someone might kidnap them if you let them go to a friend's house alone. It's one of the hardest things a parent does when they let their child do something like going to the park or a friend's alone so they can learn independence.

When they are teens you worry if they are going to resist all the negative peer pressure that goes with junior high and high school, you worry about the drugs and alcohol that will most definitely be widely available to them and if you as a parent have done enough to help them avoid using.  You worry if they are staying abstinent because you know how complicated life will become when you add sex into very new and very immature relationships and if they are having sex they are at least smart enough to use protection. The toughest thing is to begin allowing them to make their own decisions and mistakes even though you know that some of the decisions they are going to make will be wrong.  It is equally tough to try and express your own life's lessons and experiences to them so they may be able to learn from them and help them avoid the same mistakes.  I have found that very few of these lessons/experiences that are shared with teens ever truly impact them until much later in life when they are grown, made the mistake and then remember when they were warned

When they reach adulthood and begin their lives as an adult, you worry about their happiness, their sense of independence, their self-esteem, their spiritual growth and you worry about how to give advise without sounding like you are telling them what to do because it is so very important for them to make their own decisions, right or wrong, so they can learn life's lessons and grow as a person and have those lessons to pass to their own children that most assuredly will not be listened to until much later in their lives.

To my beautiful, wonderful children, each of you are my greatest joy in life.  I know that with each of you, we have gone (or going through) some really tough moments, but in the end, there is absolutely nothing that I love more than having each of you in my life and seeing a part of me grow in each of you.