Always connected by heartstrings to adult children

One day on the phone my daughter Andrea was recounting how happy she is after a long conversation with her son.

Grayson, her oldest child, is a college student who doesn't get home much since he left for Emerson in Boston. But they stay close via phone and email.

"He's so happy," Andrea says. "I just feel like flying when I listen to him talk about how happy he is."

I so understand that. When our kids are happy, we're happy. It's wonderful when they call to share happy news.

Every parent knows we never outgrow our love and concern for our kids.

Even when our kids grow and have children of their own, our love, our joy and our concern for them remains constant.

We beam when our kids are happy and doing well. And the opposite is also true. When they hurt, we hurt.

Last week a woman shared her worries about her daughter's many misfortunes. Her daughter has been smacked with a divorce on top of severe health challenges.

"When do we ever stop hurting when our children hurt?" asked my friend.

The answer, of course, is never.

No matter how old they are, our kids continue to tug on our heartstrings.

I will never forget the poignant scene I came across when I walked in a quiet nature park. A woman sat next to a stream, tears rolling down her face as she appeared to be bent over in pain.

When I asked if I could do anything to help, I learned it wasn't physical pain that had her hurting. She was bent over in grief because her youngest child was just sentenced to a long prison term.

She talked about how hard it was for her to be happy with her own life when she sees the mistakes her son is making.

"No matter how much I love him I can't help him," she cried.

There's an old expression that says: Little children, little problems. Big kids, big problems.

One sad thing we find as parents is that as our children grow we lose our ability to make their problems go away.

When they are young, young enough to come to us with their problems, we always find a way to make them feel better. Parents have that ability.

But we don't have the ability to control the river of life. We can be there for our kids during troubled waters. We can try with all our might to keep them from drowning. But we can't swim through life for them. While we can offer support and encouragement, they have to swim on their own.

I know the woman by that stream came to that conclusion long ago when nothing she did could change the course of her son's life.

Decades after my own daughters grew up and left to live their own lives, I still find what happens to them impacts my own emotions.

When they have little triumphs, their happiness settles into my very being. I'm smiling with joy long after I talk with a happy daughter.

When a problem has them down, it affects me, too.

Is it so-called normal to have the feelings of our adult children tug on our own heartstrings?

Or is there a time in life when we can and should detach ourselves emotionally from our grown children?

A while back I had a very close friend tell me she stops being affected by her children's lives after they graduate from high school.

"While they are in school, they are my concern. When they graduate, they are responsible for their lives. I don't want to hear their problems anymore," she said.

I insisted she was full of baloney because she always has been a wonderful, caring mother. "You don't turn love off and on," I told her.

She retorted that there is a big difference between loving your adult children and being emotionally involved in their lives.

She said after she graduated from high school she would not have thought of sharing her problems with her parents.

I asked if she shared her pleasures and her joys. After thinking about it for a while, she admitted she did.

So, does she want her own kids to call her and share their happy news after they have left the nest?

Everyone wants to hear happy news, she said, but grown kids need to wrestle with their own problems without bringing them to parents.

"It's calling growing up," my friend insisted.

I have to admit we carried on that conversation for a long time, and it spurred me on to talk with other parents about emotional ties to adult children.

Most agree with me that we remain emotionally connected to our children, no matter how old they are.

I guess how much "sharing" continues depends on family relationships. I feel blessed that my daughters and I remain close. We share our ups and downs. We celebrate our victories together and we share our concerns. We value feedback from each other.

To us, there's a difference between "growing up" and growing apart.

While it's healthy to live our own lives, not our children's, I'll care about their feelings until the last shovelful of dirt falls on my grave.

And maybe even after that.