Finding Our Way Forward: When the Children We Love Become Adults

by Melanie Springer Mock

When our children turn 18, we hope to happily launch them into the world to become the adults we've been preparing them to be. Their pathway seems most will go to college, find a vocation and then a true love, and settle into a comfortable life while we parents keep in touch through occasional phone calls, family gatherings, and surprise trips home for Christmas. But now more than ever, these expectations fail to acknowledge the significant challenges faced by many young people, from a pandemic to racial unrest to a climate crisis that is setting the world on fire, figuratively and literally. While young people are consistently told they need to discern God's calling, in Finding Our Way Forward , Melanie Springer Mock draws on her decades as a college professor and mom to four adult children to explore how finding our way means developing a more expansive understanding of calling for ourselves and for the young adults we love, one that moves beyond vocation and capitalistic enterprises to what God really calls us Seeking justice. Loving mercy. Walking with humility. Loving others. Loving God. As we do so, our relationships can be transformed as together we find our way forward.

Genres: Parenting, Memoir

208 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2023

Reviews

[Leslie Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant writing. I so appreciate her ability to describe the heart wrenching process of launching young adults with humility, humor and grace.

[Shirley Showalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melanie Springer Mock is a mom, a professor, and a Friend (Quaker) with a powerful, vulnerable voice. She brings this trinity of relationships to a subject that has received scant attention in the parenting literature. As parents, we go through stages along with our children, but the purpose of all the early stages — infancy, toddlerhood, elementary school, and high school — is to prepare us for the last, adulthood. This transition out of childhood brings with it both grief (for the lost innocence and dependence of youth) and joy (for the independence and unique application of shared values). A professor, especially one who teaches in a small Christian college or university, has played a unique role in other families. An English professor, who reads a lot of personal essays, gets embedded vicariously into many families. When the personal parenting stages begin to match the professional role of mentor in transitions, reality becomes multi-dimensional. Friends, both ones with teenagers turning adult and ones who can stand apart from the drama of that stage, become all the more important.

This book combines all these perspectives as Professor Mock shares relevant findings from social science and spirituality resources, interviews friends, and relates her personal stories throughout. I have called this form "stealth memoir," and I find it very appealing. The tone is never one of "expert." Rather, it is the tone of a modern day Pilgrim's Progress. The author shares her anxieties and self-perceived mistakes. Then she takes a flying leap into the unknown. What an apt metaphor for the final stage of parenting.

[Marilee Jolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was blown away by Finding Our Way Forward. As a mom to a 14-year-old and 16-year-old, Springer-Mock's book both comforts and challenges me: comfort that I am not alone in the worry, fear, and pain I experience as my children grow up and challenge to step more courageously into releasing control and truly trusting our all-loving God with these most precious humans.
Dr. Mock does not shy away from the hard moments in parenting, narrating in painful detail the hard moments so many of us experience as our children grow up. In fact, she encourages us to lean into those feelings with true, biblical lament, to find the moments of thanksgiving, and to trust that this pain brings greater empathy and understanding. Ultimately, the book is calling us to transformation. It is a call to transform our expectations away from a capitalist, control-based, narrow path for our children's lives and careers and, instead, to embrace humility, trusting that God's vision for our children is bigger than what we can hope for or imagine. It's a scary call. It's a call I know I will need to return to over and over again. So I'm placing Finding Our Way Forward on my bedside table, right next to Everything Belongs (Rohr), 365 Days of Rumi (Barks), and Undrowned (Gumbs). So thankful for this powerful book just at the moment I needed it most.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars for transparency, honesty, and sincerity.
This is a remarkable vulnerable accounting of the author's personal experience of launching her children from dependents into young adulthood juxtaposed with her 20+ years interacting with students as a writing university professor in the Pacific Northwest.

Besides deep exploration of the complex and varied feelings associated with being a parent and the angst of letting/observing your children follow their own path, with many of the ways a parent wonders what kind of influence one truly has, for better or worse, to instill values, the author also explores multiple themes associated with parenthood: adoption, working full-time, parents' need for support and community, self doubt and conviction, martial relationships, children enlisting in the military, loneliness, racism and bias, as well as spirituality, faith, and church.

Her integrity as a writer shines throughout the book, as parents of teens and young adults can relate to her experiences, inner struggles and feelings, providing solitary to parents who need support and normalizing what they are experiencing.

Despite all of the challenges of parenting, the author clearly expresses her devout love and gratefulness to her children, while giving parents and children the benefit of the doubt that everyone is trying and doing their best. Though parenting well can feel like walking a tightrope, this book is full of grace.

Note: the author identifies as a Quaker and Mennonite who regularly attends church and has strong convictions associated with Pacifism and the military. Much of the book is sprinkled with biblical quotes and references, to address her personal beliefs and convictions.

Full disclosure: I met the author many years ago and went to college with her husband.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title resonates for me on several levels.
With some variations, the author's position in life as a parent watching children grow into their own people and the harrowing path in a post-COVID environment is a gap that needs to be addressed. Children choosing some or none of the religious traditions of their youth has been a theme for thousands of years. The current environment with a different health, political, and religious world is unsettling. Melanie Springer Mock helps to define the issues as a parent, academic, and Christian.
Part of my heritage is Quaker and Mennonite. The elements of those traditions came through in my reading, but would not overbearing to those from other traditions. The statements help to define where her path diverges and merges with my own. The elements will help place the ideas in context.
Melanie Springer Mock's expose to thousands of undergraduate students is invaluable in her being able to provide a broader picture to those of use with only a few close examples of young people making the transition from high school to adulthood.
The book is a good adjunct to Traci Rhoades' "Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost, A story of church" and "Shaky Ground: What to do After the Bottom Drops Out." for the paths taken at a different stage of life.

[Jere Witherspoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melanie Springer Mock shares her own journey as a backdrop for how we should consider approaching this season of life with our adult children. It is a gift of the story when an author reveals their own life on the pages of a book. Melanie is vulnerable with her successes, as well as her mistakes.

Sharing her own account of an emerging adult we get the picture that this was a time of loneliness and isolation. She weaves her story with that of her own children as they faced many of the same experiences, comparing the loneliness that young adults feel when they leave the nest.

I loved the way Melanie integrated the complexities of the pandemic that interrupted the 'sacred rights of passage' that define the transition to adulthood.

What I especially appreciated is how timely the message this book presents to the reader.

Melanie helps us see how difficult the world is for young adults today with everything that is challenging age-old customs and ideals in our world, government, churches, and ultimately, families.

She draws not only from her experience as a mother but as a seasoned college professor as she gently reminds the reader that young adults today are seeking authenticity and truth in their relationships. Parents of young adults today would be wise to reconsider their approaches as they help their own children navigate this precarious time of life.

Because of this desire, it is important that parents own and honor their own mistakes with their children and consider that this is part of our own growth process.

For parents needing a blueprint to follow this book does not disappoint. Although my adult children are in their 30s, the insights that Melanie provides are timeless, needed, and well worth considering.

[Michelle VanLoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are plenty of books packed with counsel for new parents, but until now, there hasn’t been a guide to navigating the years when our kids move into adulthood. Finding Our Way Forward: When the Children We Love Become Adults by Melanie Springer Mock offers a thoughtful, honest, compassionate exploration of the changes and challenges both parents and young adult children navigate during the “launch years”. She writes from the perspective of both a parent and a college professor, and her observations and insights are of great value. There are no tidy formulas for this stage of parenting, but Mock reminds us that parents and young adult children alike can find their way forward through these complex and hope-filled years.

[Dyann Bockstahler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is like sitting with a good friend over a cup of coffee and speaking honestly about the feelings of raising children to adulthood, The author’s ability to share her own vulnerabilities with her personal experience with her two sons creates a safe space for the reader to feel a connection with what the author is communicating. The idea of acceptance and the courage to really listen when there is disagreement is central to the theme in this book of maintaining the integrity of the child-parent relationship. The author owns when her actions may have created mistrust and offers guidance in how to repair the relationship. The idea of offering grace over and over strengthens the relationship between parent and young adult child! Not only is this book an enjoyable read with “aha” moments , it also provides reassurance that there is indeed a healthy way forward in spite of unexpected roadblocks!

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I happened to read this book the very week my 17-yr-old tested out of high school after nearly 2 years of struggling with anxiety and severe depression. It was such a helpful reminder that we are not alone, that the transition into adulthood is never easy and rarely goes as expected. I love Melanie's honesty and humor, wisdom and humility. I have already bought more copies to give as gifts to friends who are in a similar life stage and who work with teens and young adults.