Transition to adulthood

This chapter want supports you to in

• dealing with upcoming changes in the family system. 
  
• gaining knowledge in order to modify (actively) your role as parents.
  
• thinking about which support services and responsibilities can be handed over.
  
• reflecting on the advantages and disadvantages of „parents as legal guardians“.
  
• seeing the significance of the meetings with other parents and the possibility for exchange among each other.

It is important to know that detachment does not mean to break up the bond with your own children. The child will always have a relationship to the parents. The more stable the relationship is within the family, the stronger it will be, when the child becomes independent.[1] The bond is not cut, it is modified and reconstructed.

"Detachment comprises all developments within the parent-child-relation." [2]

Many parents put an equation mark between moving out of the parental house and detachment. But the first separation in the child’s life happens long before moving out. “Birth followed by ablactation, learning to walk, development of your own will (terrible two’s) etc. are milestones in the increasing independence from parents”.[3] It is a natural step on the way to autonomy to have your own apartment or a place in a living group. You as parents should be proud of your performance. You have managed to let your child go out to the world. Melancholy and fears can be mixed to this proudness: Melancholy, as a period of live ends, this intense parenthood won’t return, fears of changes in your own life and discomfort with the adult child.

„We make many transitions in our lives, but perhaps the one with the most far-reaching consequences is the transition into adulthood.”[4]

Detachment during youth is not only a time for development for the youngster, but also a time for learning for parents. “For both parties, detachment is a stage of dis- and new orientation and signifies identity crises not only for the child, but also for the parents.” „Unsolved detachment processes of youngsters restrain the new orientation of parents as much as unsolved new orientation of parents restrains the detachment of the young person.“[5]