Mark:
This week, our twins, Eden and Xen, begin 11th grade. Somehow, 11th grade feels different. There are only two years of high school left, and college and adulthood aren't abstract ideas somewhere far in the future anymore. They're beginning to appear on the horizon as we have real conversations about college, possible career paths, and what they each imagine their lives looking like after high school.
As if we needed another reminder, they're also both learning to drive.
There was a time when I thought having teenagers who could drive would mean freedom. Apparently, I failed to account for the part where someone actually has to teach them to drive first.
Renee:
I have done my share of driving lessons with both Eden and Xen, although I will admit that sitting calmly in the passenger seat while one of my children learns to operate a several-thousand-pound vehicle does cause me a lot of anxiety.
There is something surreal about sitting beside your child as they learn to drive. One minute you're giving very practical instructions about checking mirrors, watching your speed, or making a turn, and the next you're realizing that the little person you once buckled into a car seat is now the one sitting behind the wheel.
And despite all this talk of growing independence, our back-to-school routine doesn't exactly scream freedom yet. There will still be rides to school, afternoon pickups, schedules to coordinate, places they need to be, and plenty of moments when "Mom, can you take me..." reminds me that we're not quite done with this part of parenting.
But it is changing.
They don't need us in the same ways they once did, and they don't want us involved in every decision either. We're learning that parenting sixteen-year-olds requires a different kind of presence. There is more listening, more asking questions, more offering guidance when it's wanted (and occasionally when it isn't), and more trusting that sixteen years of conversations, values, experiences, mistakes, and love have given them a pretty solid foundation.
I want them to become independent. That's the goal. I want them to make decisions, figure things out, discover what matters to them, and eventually create lives that are completely their own. But wanting that doesn't mean I don't occasionally look at them and wonder how we got here quite so quickly.
Mark:
Lately, as I've been taking Xen out to practice driving and watching both of our kids gain confidence behind the wheel, I've realized that parenting has always been about preparing ourselves to eventually become passengers.
When they're little, we hold the steering wheel for almost everything. We decide where they're going, how they're getting there, and what they need along the way. As they grow, we gradually hand over more responsibility until eventually they're the ones deciding where they want to go and our role becomes less about choosing the destination and more about helping them learn how to navigate the road.
Sitting in the passenger seat while your sixteen-year-old drives makes that metaphor much more literal, but I think that's what we've been preparing for all along. Our job was never to drive their lives for them. It was to give them the tools, values, confidence, and support they would need when it was finally their turn to take the wheel.
And here we are, beginning to hand them the keys.
Renee:
That realization has also made me think differently about how I want to spend these next two years.
We've always built our businesses around our family. There were seasons when I would sit in the school pickup line with my computer on my lap and my phone acting as a hotspot so I could keep working while I waited. Other times, work happened after the kids went to bed, between activities, or wherever I could squeeze it in. That wasn't always easy, but one of the reasons we chose entrepreneurship was because we wanted the freedom to build a life where our family didn't have to fit around someone else's definition of a workday.
There's a strange irony in allowing the businesses we built to give our family more freedom to consume the very time we wanted that freedom for.
There will always be another email to answer, another project to launch, another opportunity to pursue, and something that feels urgent enough to demand our attention. But there won't always be another 11th-grade year.
There won't always be another school pickup.
There won't always be another "Mom, can you take me...?"
And as much as I may occasionally complain about those things while I'm in the middle of them, I know myself well enough to know that someday I'll miss those moments.
Mark:
I think that's what this season is asking of both of us: not to hold on tighter, but to pay closer attention.
Eden and Xen are supposed to grow up. They're supposed to need us less. They're supposed to have ideas we didn't give them, dreams we didn't choose for them, and eventually lives that don't revolve around ours.
That's not something we're losing. It's something we've spent sixteen years helping create.
The challenge is learning to celebrate their growing independence while still appreciating this beautiful middle, when they're becoming young adults but they're still here. They're still sitting around our dinner table, telling us about their days, asking for advice, needing rides, making us laugh, occasionally making us crazy, and filling our home with the particular kind of energy that only teenagers can bring.
We know this season won't last forever, and that's exactly what makes it matter.
Mark & Renee:
As we begin another school year, we're thinking less about how quickly these next two years might pass and more about how we want to live them while they're here.
We want more conversations around the dinner table, more walks and bike rides, more spontaneous adventures, more moments without our phones, and more opportunities to enjoy who Eden and Xen are becoming instead of wishing we could slow the process down.
We're realistic enough to know there will still be deadlines, launches, meetings, school pickups, driving lessons, and days when everything feels like it's happening at once. But if something has to give occasionally, we hope it's the deadline and not the family dinner, the project and not the memory, the busyness and not our presence.
Whatever season you're in right now, the invitation isn't to hold onto it or rush toward whatever comes next; it's to recognize it while you're living it.
Because eventually, we'll become the passengers. Eden and Xen will choose their own roads, make their own turns, and decide where they want their lives to take them.
And when that happens, we hope we'll be able to look back on this season knowing we didn't spend all of it looking ahead.
We were here for it.