Hold On, Or Let Go?

This evening I went to a wake for an old childhood friend but before I left home I had a blow up with my son over his school work, or lack there of. On my way home from the wake, still thinking about our row, I realized that no matter how old your children are, they are still your child and you will still want to parent them. Unfortunately the older they get, the more you lose control. When they were little you could control who they played with, what they ate, what they did, etc., But now with my baby growing up, he is getting beyond my control and I don't like it.

I wish I could make him understand my fears. Make him see my reasons for nagging and punishing and threatening him, but I know I can't, he has to learn for himself. But I also wish I had a crystal ball that would show me the future. Will he turn out all right? Will it be ok? Should I let him fail and find his own way, or should I push harder?

I'm sure most of you who know me are thinking oh Michelle, he will turn out great, its just a phase, but honestly folks I don't know. Our parental egos like to tell us that we are the ultimate control in how our kids turn out, but the older I get the more I see too many people who came from great loving homes who turned out to be royal fuck ups at life. Anything from failure to launch, to addiction and death. Honestly, it scares the daylights out of me.

At the same time I think about my late friends parents and how they are probably asking themselves, what could we have done different, could we have changed things? I think about my own parents who lost my brother at age 12, who dealt with me being pregnant at 16 and all the fun stuff my sister and I have put them through over the years... yep, karma is a bitch I tell you. My only solace in all of this is the idea that my kids too will have kids of their own someday.....and I hope their kids are just as bad as their parents were