Appreciating the Parents

I came across this article yesterday, Your children will appreciate you (when they've reached 22), and I thought it had a lot of truth and insight to the parent/child relationship. Basically, what the article is getting to is it takes leaving the home and experiencing real life before you start appreciating what your parents have done for you. Of course, the article says it takes having a child or reaching the age of 27 for women, 29 for men, before you actually start respecting your parents, but at least the appreciation comes on before that! This got me thinking...

When I was a teenager, I wasn't very nice to my parents. I didn't see them as trying to protect me, but more as trying to stifle my social life! And, looking back at it now, it wasn't even a big deal. But we all KNOW now that the things that matter at 16, don't really matter in real life! Anyway, fast forward a couple years...I can't tell you the exact time I started to appreciate my parents, but I would say it happened before I was 22. When I was 22, I got married and that forever changed my relationship with my parents, for the better. I no longer felt they had to be my parents and they were all the sudden my friends. And I truly love and value my parents wholly. They are so great and I can be 100% honest with them, which makes the relationship work so well.

Anyway, all that to say, I think this is a good, and true, article; worth taking five minutes of your time to skim. Even though part of it applies to me, not all of it does. Marriage really was the key to the next step in my relationship with my parents...I love those two!