This November my sister and I and our families met up for early Thanksgiving, traveling to my older daughter’s home in Pennsylvania. Our three grown children decided to cook for us parents – we were not to help. They were not particularly interested in what we thought about for menu choices and I was disappointed that some of those choices were not my traditions. Did my daughters become someone else’s daughters?

I was particularly shocked at the kids’ choice to have box stuffing—sacrilege! No stuffed turkey with the homemade stuffing I loved to make? They did acquiesce to adding chopped apple, from one I took from our hotel’s breakfast buffet. The sweet potatoes were baked, not candied like my mother-in-law’s passed-down family recipe. The green bean casserole featured steamed fresh beans, not canned. We had cheddar-apple pie and a cranberry tart from a recipe popped up in a Facebook feed. They did allow me to make my cranberry-orange sauce, but I soon realized (with my sister’s help) that I should just be quiet and let our children cook and serve the way THEY wanted to.

Our dinner was perfect. Perfectly delicious. And the fact that we were all together chatting and laughing was the greatest Thanksgiving. Traditions are wonderful, but rigid obedience is not. The younger generation have minds of their own, not bound by our reins, and that’s okay. I will be cooking a mini version of my “proper” Thanksgiving meal on the real Thanksgiving Day, but I do plan to bake the sweet potatoes this time instead of candying.

Whitney Fleming writes on a Facebook page I follow, as well her blog, about her relationships and life lessons learned from raising her children. She posted on FB:

“Feel the feel with your teens and young adults this holiday season. Then take the wheel and put your energy into creating moments you can enjoy instead of stewing about how things have changed.”