Let’s start with the fact that we never stop being a parent. No matter how old our kids are - 5, 10, 20 or 35 -  we will always be their parents. My oldest is 24 and I still call her my child, and I am still her parent -  but I feel that I have stopped parenting her. We get together, have fun, I spoil her, want to be with her and I hope she sees me as some kind of a friend too, although not her best friend of course.

But the time when we CAN stop parenting varies from family to family and child to child; all our kids are different and they n...