Our elder daughter returns from her boarding school. She returns home after spending 3 years. She will now finish her final two years of schooling with us. She will be celebrating her 18th birthday in couple of months. Contrastingly, our younger daughter is still two years away from being a teen.
Until now parenting was easy with not much difference in talks, like focus on studies, develop your interests, pick up a sport, and enjoy. But with a soon to be another adult, our elder daughter, our messaging will now have to guide her to pick a career, decide a specialisation, educate her that finally her preferences will have long-term ramifications.
She has to now nurture the thought of making a living. She will be lucky if she gets to do what she loves to. But I, as her father would prefer to guide her about such constraints and yet steal few moments from her routine life to do what she loves to.
She will soon be transitioning into a world where her engagement with outsiders will proportionately be higher compared to us. She has cooked a paneer dish and I will take it as a signal of she gearing to cook her own food. And I am sure she will soon earn her food too.
We will be playing a challenging role of being a parent to a child and an adult. It seems days are here to be tested as parents.