Parenting: Letting Go of Your Grown Kids
The SelfWork Podcast
Margaret Robinson Rutherford PhD
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Parenting is hard. It may be the most ambiguous job you’ll ever have. Not only do you have to wait literally years to see what the “finished product” truly is – you have to get through adolescence and social media influence and screen time and drug use and hurt from relationships and broken bones and just basic screw-ups on your part – but there’s no guaranteed rule book.
Parenting has stages...
Today’s episode is on the stage of parenting, where you leave the “teaching” stage of parenting to the “consulting” stage. You move from having a very central, controlling role with your kids to a less primary, but still very important role. You don’t tell them what to do necessarily – but you offer guidance. And if they fall, you help them get up. You show your belief in them – you don’t try (as hovering helicopter or even worse lawn-mower parents do) to make sure they’re not facing any obstacles. You may think you see the obstacle before they do – but they’re grown. And they’ve got to live out their choices – just as you did. Or hopefully you did.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is self-work, and I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. |
| 0:10.3 | At self-work, we discuss psychological and emotional issues and what you can do about them, |
| 0:15.7 | whether that's learning self-acceptance, taking action, or seeking therapy or treatment. |
| 0:21.3 | Eight years ago, I extended the walls of my practice to reach those of you who might already be |
| 0:26.1 | knowledgeable about middle health treatment, but also to those of you who might say you'd never |
| 0:31.3 | darken the door of a therapist. And yet, you are here. I'll answer your questions while I invite |
| 0:37.1 | you to take a few minutes for your |
| 0:39.1 | own self-work. Let's talk briefly about the stages of parenting. Most models talk about |
| 0:46.9 | six stages. Here they are. The image-making stage, that's before you're an actual parent, |
| 0:52.9 | the nurturing stage, the authority stage, the |
| 0:57.1 | interpretive stage, the interdependent stage, and then what's the last stage? It's the departure |
| 1:02.9 | stage. Now that's not death. Welcome to this week's edition of self-work. Parenting is hard. It may be the most ambiguous job you'll ever have. Not only do you have |
| 1:15.7 | to wait literally years to see what the finished product truly is. You have to get through |
| 1:21.2 | adolescence and social media influence and screen time and drug use and hurt from relationships |
| 1:26.9 | and broken bones and just basic screw-ups on your part, |
| 1:30.9 | that there's no guaranteed rulebook. |
| 1:32.8 | Even your best friend may parent differently than you do. |
| 1:36.1 | And one or more of your children can experience depression or bullying or maybe they are the bully. |
| 1:41.8 | You can listen to all the podcast in the world and still be unsure about |
| 1:46.0 | just how to parent well. You and your parent partner, if you have one, may not agree and |
| 1:51.5 | fight a lot about how to raise the kids. After all, you have your own adult problems that are |
| 1:56.6 | happening at the same time. But today's episode is on moving on as a parent, leaving the |
... |
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