When Do We Stop as Parents? Last week, I was traveling. As we were boarding the plane, I overheard a mother asking her teenage son to give her his backpack so she could put it in the overhead bin. Her reasoning was simple: if the backpack went overhead, he would have more legroom under the seat in front of him. He refused. She asked him again. And again. And maybe a third or fourth time, her voice getting increasingly frustrated. But he continued to refuse. I couldn't help but think about something that happened in our own family a few months ago. We were in almost the exact same situation. My husband was having the same conversation with our grown son. At first, our son politely declined. But when my husband kept asking, my son finally said, “These are my legs, and I'm fine having my backpack under the seat.” And there it was. A boundary. My son wasn't being disrespectful. He wasn't arguing. He simply made a decision about his own comfort and stood by it. My husband,...