Don't let them push you around, my youngest son said halfway through the Camino de Santiago. You don't have to get up early if you don't want to. I didn't know that was an option, replied his brother from his bunk. This subversive banter is what our family sounds like now. The old hierarchy has loosened. We are four adults negotiating the day.
When I was researching and writing my new book, I knew that the focus would be on identifying ways to parent adult children that results in more harmonious and less stressful contact. But the farther I got into it, interviewing people and reading the research, the more I realized that every decade has its unique challenges and that I needed to fine tune how we communicate with our adult offspring based on their current stage in life.
I need help encouraging my son to pursue his education. He has started a bachelor's program at least twice now and has taken a variety of classes, but he has never completed a program. For some time, I let go of my own desires for him and tried to make peace with the idea that maybe school just isn't for him, but the way the job market is looking these days, it's less about my personal wishes and feels a lot more like a necessity.