As the end of adolescence approaches, most young people will consider the prospect of leaving home. Some will long for the freedom a place of their own seems to offer, and some will shy away from the responsibilities and hard work they realize is entailed.

It could be argued that you can measure the success of parenting a child by the amount of care, guidance and protection that has been given, but the success of parenting a teenager by the degree with which you have gradually stepped back and let them go it alone. The way they take to looking after themselves, and their ability to cope, and how you face up to the fact of their leaving could be seen as your Graduation Test.

Your young person is likely to have to leave at some point – to go to college, to seek work or to form a family of their own. Even if none of this applies, most emerging adults do feel the need to establish their own base as a final step in the journey from childhood to adulthood. Whether they launch off sooner or later, with your consent or in the wake of arguments, with success of failure, is largely in your hands. It is your attitude to their leaving, and the efforts you have made to teach them how to look after themselves and a home that may dictate all this.

Some parents make such a comfortable home for their late teenagers that they find it extremely difficult to think of leaving. Such a parent is always on hand with a duster, clean clothing and a hot meal, and is ever-ready to slip junior a few pounds. Such a parent congratulates themselves on being so good at their job of providing a loving, comfortable home that their children never want to leave them. To be needed is seen as the greatest compliment.

The problem is that only dependent children need their parents in this way. While catering to a child when it is not capable of looking after it is admirable, refusing to develop a young person’s ability to look after itself, to artificially prolong such dependency, is not. When a young person coddled in this way does eventually venture forth, he or she can find living in the real world confusing and even painful, and may feel little gratitude for your silken cords. Young people of both sexes who have been over-protected are quite likely to find themselves in poor relationships and marriages. They will be seeking another Mother or Father to do everything for them as their parents have done, rather than looking for an equal mate with whom they can share their lives. They may also charge into an ill-advised marriage, seeing it as the only way they will be able to break free of you.

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