The music they like. The radical politics. The unrealistic expectations about money and career. Their lifestyle choices. The piercing and the tattoos. Their sex life. Their therapy-speak and their obsession with “mental health.”

This generation is different. Every generation has been different than the one that came before, to be sure, but young people these days…Even gender is in flux?

But you know, what? There’s something weirder than all this, something even more extreme and unprecedented and beyond the pale. You know what it is? It’s not loving your kids.

It doesn’t matter what they believe. It doesn’t matter who they marry. It doesn’t matter what they do in their bedroom. It doesn’t matter what color they dye their hair. The only truly unnatural thing is to not accept them and love them and want them in your life.

People who don’t love their kids are weird. People who judge and condemn and cast out? They’re weird. Parents who can’t get over what their grown-ass kids decide to do with their lives, who would rather be ‘right’ than together? Who would rather listen to broken, angry people online than their own heart, than the pleading of their own flesh and blood? That’s weird.

Don’t be weird. Be there for them. Be a good parent.