THE REINS HAVE SLACKENED. IT WILL SOON BELONG TO THEM.

The education children give parents is never ending, and it goes both ways. They are young and, though The Baby is almost a legal adult, there is so much for them to yet experience in life.

The past few years, we have watched from a distance, the conversion of teenagers to young adults, going “steady” to engagements to weddings to babies. We were with our kids and a group of their friends the other night, celebrating the engagement of one of the young couples. I have watched this young couple grow up and both, The Boy and The Baby, are in the wedding party.

To give them all of the information we have experienced through life is impossible. We give them the best, consolidated pieces of advice we can in their first 18 years. There are not enough hours in the day to have detailed conversations about everything. It takes 30 minutes to watch a sitcom on television, but an hour to explain it to someone who missed the episode. Besides the fact, they would never believe us on some things. They’ll learn as they go forward in their lives, but watching them experience things for the first time makes me smile at their naïve thinking.

I remember giving the kids their education on insurance in their early teens, and why they had to have it. The Boy honestly thought I was lying to him. It sounded like a legalized gambling ring, where you pay into it, most of your life for auto, home, medical and life. If nothing happens, you lose. Who gets to keep all this money you pay in? When he finally began to believe me, he said, “no, I don’t want any insurance”. I told him it was the law -- no insurance, no car, no freedom. : )

The education from them has been priceless as well. Myspace and Facebook were introduced by them to us. Keeping current with favorite people and music has been so much easier with these great networking sites.

The education from them has continued. A couple of months ago, I learned what a “weenus” is and most of us have two of them. I know what you’re thinking too, and I had the same thought myself. I didn’t know there was a name for that, much less one that rhymes so well with another body part. I’ll wait here while you Google it.

There is more slang I’ve learned over the years, like emo, nuff, shiznit, etc. The slang is the hardest to keep up with, but if used in a sentence properly, you can usually understand after a hearing few times. Every generation has had slang, but we only had lyrics on albums to identify it. For these new words to go across the country to the youth took a lot longer than it does now. Today, the internet has made it so much easier for their vocabulary to spread so quickly.

At the party, the parents grouped, talking of the kids and the kids grouped together, talking about themselves and each other. We felt older watching them, but it’s a nice feeling of being older. They’ve given us pleasure and we now stand in awe of them, gullible and so trusting that the world is waiting for them. We have been careful not to share in details of some events of life, because we do not want them to have certain experiences until necessary. Illness, death or other sadness is seen in their upbringing, hopefully from a distance, and quickly smoothed over by protective mothers, so their pain is minimal. Without this form of protection, they wouldn’t be the same young adults with the innocent wide eyed look at the life in front of them.

It was so much fun to share in their dreams this night. There were a couple engagements this year, and we all wondered quietly which couple would be next. After a lot of time thinking, I think this is the best time of our lives. It’s when the kids are grown, making their own decisions and we are not yet too old to really enjoy life. We are still young enough to have fun, without the worries of constant daily parenting. Twenty years from now may suck, but now is amazing to witness the innocent preparing to take over the world.