RULE 10

They love you just like you love your kids

For most of us, when we’re little our parents are the most important thing in the world. We can’t imagine them not being there, and we feel we simply couldn’t cope if they weren’t. Our world revolves around them.

As we get older they are still central to our lives, but we spend more time away from them and their importance is less central. Then we start to get into long-term relationships, and our partner is even more important than our parents. Once we have children, they become the focus of our lives (along with our partner) so that our parents, much as we still love them, are no longer the focal point as they used to be. We’ve moved on.

But what has happened to our parents? Well, consider how you’ll feel about your own kids in 20 years or so. Will you have moved on? I doubt it. However strong and enduring your relationship with your partner, your children’s happiness will always be crucial to your own. They will always be among the most important people in the world to you.

Have you noticed how much parents – of any age – talk about their kids? When older friends meet each other they almost always ask after the children – or the parents volunteer the information without waiting to be asked. Of course we sometimes talk about our parents but it’s not generally such a focus of conversation.

So while you’ve moved on from your parents, up to a point, to focus on your partner and your children, for them you are still central just as your children will be to you in years to come. In other words, they still love you as strongly and fiercely as you love your kids and they always will.

Listen, I’m not trying to guilt-trip you here about how much time you spend with your parents. This is the way things are meant to be, with the love, attention, care, passion always cascading down from one generation to the next. But it can only help to be mindful of how much you mean to your parents, how much it matters to them that the relationship between you is strong and positive. They understand that you need to focus on your children – they went through the same process with their parents when you came along – but it doesn’t stop them loving you and worrying about you. If you can recognize that and make the occasional nod to it, it will make all the difference to their world.