VIRGINIA BEACH — I realized something about parenthood during a recent family road trip to West Virginia. It dawned on me that it isn’t the formative years that matter the most to our children, although they are important. Instead, the young adult years might be more significant – and in a way we don’t expect.
I’ve always liked road trips. From the time I was young, I felt long-distance travel was a treat. Back then, we didn’t wear seat belts, so my younger brother sat up front with our parents and the map while my sister and I lounged across the back seat, one of us sleeping in the foot area if we traveled past dark.
We spread out our magazines, books, Barbies and snacks and settled in for the journey. We sang along to just about every song on the radio, played games involving the passing scenery and were lulled to sleep by my father’s baritone at night.
It was a time out of time.
With our traveling technology, road trips are different for families today. We buckle up, use GPS to get to where we’re going, read or work on our laptops or watch movies and videos on our phones.
However, during our last few road trips, our youngest son, now 19, introduced us to a new family favorite to fill the travel hours: podcasts.
Listening to podcasts while traveling means we talk instead of disappearing into our little technology-enhanced worlds. Often, during a podcast, one of us will ask, “Can you pause it?”
What follows is almost invariably a discussion about a social or political issue in the world or a matter of science – our favorite podcast subjects.
In this isolated bubble moving through space and time, I found my son has a lot to say. He also has a great need to learn from us, his parents, a need that is as significant as our presence when he was learning to walk.
Our son’s habit of listening to podcasts has produced in him a desire to converse with others – specifically his parents.
He wants to know what we think, how our education and experiences shape our views and which of those views we’d like him to incorporate into his body of knowledge and way of being. And it’s clear the kid has pressing questions about the world with which he’d like some help.
Podcast road trips allow us to delve into those questions without reserve and permit us, his parents, the opportunity to contribute without lecturing.
Our family road trips are now an extension of our dinner table.
The difference is there are no distractions around us. We are each other’s entire focus, and we cannot get up and leave the table if we disagree, which has occurred. Our son grants unspoken permission for my husband and me to talk as people, not necessarily parents. For the most part, this is a new experience for all of us.
It’s often said that a parent’s work gets easier as children get older.
In some ways, I believe this is true.
Parents can relinquish so much responsibility when kids move from dependent youngsters to independent young adults. We don’t have to follow our children from swings to monkey bars to prevent scraped knees and broken arms, and, for the most part, we can stop overseeing their hygiene rituals.
Many of us can even share our kids’ carefree attitudes as they skip out the door for their adventures. For some, this can mean the end of the best part of parenting because we feel valuable when kids need us.
Our significance in their lives gives us purpose.
But young adulthood is a parent-necessary time, too, and it’s become the one, to my surprise, I like the best.
The author is a former Virginia Beach Planning Commissioner and college professor. Reach her at leejogger@gmail.com.
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