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Moving off the center of the stage–recognizing that we are no longer the key players in our children's lives–is an issue many of us struggle with. It starts  when our children move from being teens living at home to college students to young adults moving out into the world. Writing in Psychology Today, psychologist Carl Pickhardt looks at three phases of transitioning from parenting adolescent children to being mother or father to an adult. His overarching point is that it's easy to see this parenting passage as a demotion. And it is, but in the better sense of that word.

Here are some of Pickhardt's points:

"It is the blessing and the curse of doing their job well: when parents succeed in growing their children to independence, now these adults will act more independently of them.

"So does parenting end with parents not mattering? Not at all, if parents remain mindful of their primal roles. Remember how the little child called "Watch me!" "Listen to me!" "See what I can do!" "Let me tell you what I did!" What was it the little child wanted? The answer is parental attention, interest, and approval, needs the adult child never really outgrows.

"So when parents continue their roles as emotional supporter, as rapt audience, and as tireless cheerleader, what they have to offer their adult children never goes out of style, never loses lasting value."

Pickhardt ends with a quote from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "Once the realization that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."

"Loving the distance." What a fresh way to look at our loss of centrality as a gain.