Parents Have 10 Years

Catholics who pay attention to the history of canon law have it easy. For the entire history of Western civilization, the legal age of marriage as 12 for both men and women. In 1917, the Church raised it to 14 for women, 16 for men.

But that was a silly thing for the Church to do. In every human culture for which we have records, the age of consent was always around puberty, or 12 years old.

Men and women are made to be substantially ready for marriage by 12.

If you simply accept that your child will only be a child for ten years, if you really accept that in your bones from the time you start conceiving children, then you have a very clear start and end date.

You have ten years.
Period.

After that, your children are adults, they start making their own adult decisions, and you have to be ready to let them do that. You have to have spent the ten years you have with them as children to prepare them to be making adult decisions by the time they are 12. You have to accept their life choices. You lived your life, it is now time to let them live their lives.

Once they hit roughly twelve years old, you have to start treating them as adults because now they ARE adults. They are no longer your predominantly your children, they are now your colleagues, fellow adults with whom you work to accomplish everyone's life goals.

That is no longer "your child", that ten or twelve-year old is a co-worker, a junior colleague, the intern in the office, the journeyman learning the trade, but still an adult intern, an adult journeyman, an adult colleague, a fellow-laborer, a person who must be free to reject your advice, and you have to be ok with that. You're still on the same team, but your path is no longer coterminous with his path. Your child, now an adult, will necessarily branch out on his own. He will do things differently than you do, because he starts from a different place. There's nothing wrong with that. 

All of your ancestors prepared their children to be adults by age 12. They all did this - you can do it too. 

You have to do it, if you want to fully honor your children as persons.