Nancy and I had a discussion when she still lived in Illinois. We always had some really good talks while we were out walking her dogs. We were talking about my frustrations with Sammy and how “stuck” he was. She asked me what would make me feel successful as a parent in regard to his life. Hmmm, no one had ever asked me that before.

My response was that I would feel successful if he never went to jail. Her response was not what I expected her to say. She asked me how I was going to accomplish that. It was the first time I realized exactly how powerless I am when it comes to his choices and his life. It was really a light bulb moment for me.

This topic was touched on briefly during the Parenting into Adulthood panel at the ATN conference. I wanted to hear more about this, so I asked the panel what they felt their greatest success was when it came to parenting their older or adult children.

The responses varied, but the one consistent thing was that they were not large events, but rather small things. One panel member responded by saying that it was when a child graduated from high school that everyone said would never graduated. He is a developmentally delayed child and wasn’t expected to “amount to much” but he proved them wrong.

Another parent said it was the fact that her daughter who had run away had regained contact with her and was making an effort to re-establish a relationship with her.

Another panel member said it was when her son stood up in court and said that he was guilty of the crime he was accused of.

And the last panel member said that it was the fact that her son was far more functional than she ever expected him to be, even though his level of functional would be considered dysfunctional by “normal” society.

One of the responses to this question has stuck with me several years later. Deborah Hage said she felt she had made a difference in her son’s life because he was in prison for kidnapping and not murder.

Are these things that should be considered successes? You bet. Sometimes this is the best we can get. We can offer our children choices, model good behavior and guide them as much as we can, but ultimately we have no control over their decisions.

Right now, I don’t know what my version of success with Sammy is, but I am fully aware I have worked hard and done everything I can think of to help him make good choices and show him what family is like. What he takes away from this is up to him.

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