As those of you who follow my blog know, my son Dalton recently got engaged to his sweetheart and we are now in full blown wedding preparation mode. Because they want a short engagement it is like wedding planning central at our house with invitation selections, picking colors for the reception, figuring out venues, booking photographers, and all the other madness that goes with planning a wedding. My son was a little surprised to\u00a0find out that weddings aren’t as easy as\u00a0asking a girl to marry you and then…poof…having the wedding\u00a0ready to happen. He had no idea of the chaos he was going to be stepping into these next few months during preparations\u00a0for the wedding, registering for gifts, the reception, the open house, the honeymoon, the search for married college housing, and everything else that needs to get done in short order…no doubt his head is spinning!<\/p>\n
Since returning from his LDS mission over a year ago he has been adamant about wanting to be a totally\u00a0independent adult. He has been going through that phase of life where he wants to figure it all out for himself and he doesn’t really love getting parental advice unless he specifically asks us for it, and frankly he prefers not to have to ask for it at all. All part of his\u00a0quest to becoming an independent adult.\u00a0 Now don’t get me wrong, I think it is awesome for children to become independent when they reach adulthood, but it’s also painful to have so much advice you could give and to have to hold your tongue about it because they have made it clear they\u00a0will be frustrated with\u00a0you if you try to share it.\u00a0\u00a0And the times you accidentally slip and share it without being asked, you can bet you’ll get your head bit off. As a parent with a child at this stage of life it often feels like a no-win situation.\u00a0 And so I have been trying to learn how to be there to support him without stepping on his toes or his independence. Truth be told I have had a lot to learn on trying to get it right. I suppose it’s probably normal for a parent to struggle to learn to do this when its their firstborn child – heck\u00a0I’ve never raised an adult before! Trust me\u00a0when i say the struggle is definitely real!!<\/p>\n
But since getting engaged there has been a total change in my son. Not only has he asked me for advice, but he suddenly seems grateful and appreciative to get it. Not only that, he’s actually taking my advice! It’s like a\u00a0Christmas miracle! Last night he came to my room to talk to me and asked my advice on something. I gave it and then he thanked me sincerely and gave me a HUGE hug. I seriously almost started to cry! I couldn’t hold it in any more – I looked at him and asked “What is happening here? You genuinely seem happy for my advice lately! And you even admit it is good advice?!\u00a0 What’s changed???”<\/p>\n
My son then answered with words a parent never expected to hear from their child.\u00a0 He said, “We have finally entered territory I know absolutely nothing about.”<\/strong> <\/span>He then smiled and\u00a0walked out of the room.<\/p>\n All I could do is sit and laugh out loud. I wanted to jump up and yell “Hallelujah and Sing Praises! My baby acknowledges that he both WANTS and NEEDS my advice!!”\u00a0 Look I’m not going to lie – it was like the\u00a0GREATEST feeling ever! But instead I yelled out to him “I am totally putting that comment you just made in tomorrow night’s blog!”\u00a0 I heard him laugh out loud as he was walking away.<\/p>\n It’s nice to be needed as a parent, but\u00a0it’s even nicer to be appreciated by your kids, and it’s like heaven on earth to\u00a0have them express that appreciation to you themselves!\u00a0 HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!!!<\/p>\n Thanks Dalton for telling me you need me and that you appreciate me. That made my month!<\/p>\n ~Amy (aka Dalton’s Mom)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As those of you who follow my blog know, my son Dalton recently got engaged to his sweetheart and we are now in full blown wedding preparation mode. Because they want a short engagement it is like wedding planning central at our house with invitation selections, picking colors for the reception, figuring out venues, booking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[839,843,387,626,6867,501,500,46,251,60,63,200,999,240,224,179,4611,7074,51,7072,1965,65,55,180,3105,623,629,464,38,111,232,7073,2302,1770,2559,7070,112,1439,149,2606,3008,3081,7071,5058],"class_list":["post-5883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acknowledge","tag-admit","tag-advice","tag-advise","tag-alexis","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-attitude","tag-balance","tag-beautiful","tag-blessings","tag-blog","tag-child","tag-children","tag-confidence","tag-dalton","tag-engaged","tag-express-appreciation","tag-family","tag-frstborn","tag-frustrated","tag-gratitude","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-independant","tag-input","tag-inspiration","tag-joy","tag-leadership","tag-learning","tag-lessons","tag-no-win-situation","tag-normal","tag-parenthood","tag-parents","tag-raising","tag-self-improvement","tag-struggle","tag-success","tag-sweetheart","tag-teenager","tag-wedding","tag-wedding-preparation","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5883"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5888,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883\/revisions\/5888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}