However much they seem to be prioritized by other parents, by certain cultures, perhaps by your own parents, or your instincts, in the end, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter what color they dye their hair

…it doesn’t matter how clean their room is

…it doesn’t if they’re gay or straight or anything on any spectrum

…it doesn’t matter where they go to college

…it doesn’t matter what field they enter

…it doesn’t matter how dark or strange or profane the music they like is

…it doesn’t matter whether they abandon the piano

What matters is that whatever they choose, however they live, however they make their living, that they do these things well, that they do them with kindness and honesty and confidence, that they find a way to be happy and fulfilled. What will matter to you, in the end, as we have said here many times before, is that you are in their lives and they are in yours. And not in some sort of negotiated truce, some pleasant on the surface but otherwise tense and resented tolerance either.

Does this mean you let everything go? That you never express an opinion about anything or lay down a rule ever? No. But it is important that you remember what matters most, that you don’t lose the forest for the trees. That you don’t lose your credibility and your connection with them in pointless arguments over things that don’t matter, missing how well they are doing in the things that do matter in the process, losing who matters in the process.