This Mother’s Day, I do not expect my son to buy me a gift, take me to dinner or send me a card. If he calls to say hello and tell me about the events of the week, I will be delighted to hear his deep, 20-year-old man’s voice. If not, I will assume that he is engaged with his own activities and be glad that he feels no obligation to honor me on this Hallmark holiday.

Don’t get me wrong. For my husband, Ken, and I, Jack is the love of our life. But we also believe that the greatest gifts parents can give a child are confidence and independence. For children to reach that point, we need to give them permission to separate. If we do our job well, we become obsolete.

In small ways we start planning for that separation when children are very young. First we teach them to fall asleep without us. Then we read them picture books that reinforce their quest for independence. One of my favorites was Eric Carle’s charming 1987 book A House for Hermit Crab – the story of the lovable crab who twice outgrows his shell and needs to find a new place to live. I re-read this book two years ago, the summer before Jack started college. But on that occasion it was mostly for my own benefit.

At the time, our family was going through a transition that went far beyond sending a kid to college. As older parents, Ken and I were among the many baby boomers who had left traditional work arrangements, by choice or circumstance, sooner than expected. He had been sidelined by spine problems and a profound hearing loss. I had resigned an oppressive editorial job to spend more time writing books.

To make up for the loss of a steady paycheck, we came up with a plan that we hoped would turn adversity to advantage. During Jack’s first semester of college, we would rent our Brooklyn townhouse and downsize to smaller quarters in rural France.

We saw this as an opportunity to follow a dream of living overseas and to create an income stream from our house. Depending on how the experiment worked, it might either be a self-funded sabbatical or the beginning of a new stage of life. The house would always be available for Jack’s school vacations, but at other times we would rent it and live abroad on the proceeds. High-speed internet connections would make it possible to continue my work.

By taking this big step, we hoped to be role models for Jack. Raised in New York City, he is street-smart, observant, and adept at navigating subway snafus. But as a high school senior, he seemed terrified of what lay ahead. I wanted him to believe that we can get comfortable with uncertainty and embark on adventures that are not clearly charted. Like Jack, we were leaving home in every sense of the word.

The reaction from friends and family was mixed. Some applauded our plans to start a new chapter. Others speculated that since we would be away ourselves, we wouldn’t notice the vacancy in our home. A third group offered to help out if Jack needed anything while we were in Europe. Certainly they meant well, but they seemed to think that we were abandoning him, while our goal was to launch him as a young adult.

Of course, we wanted to know any details of his new life that he was inclined to share. But we didn’t see a purpose – or benefit to him – of being on standby alert “just in case.” And “just in case” what, for example?

As our misadventures in France turned into a book, on the other side of the Atlantic Jack’s transition, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, went much more smoothly. Initially, he texted several times a day about what seemed like mundane issues – for example, getting to class on time and where he sat in large lecture halls. Perhaps he was testing whether we could still be available to him from afar.

After that, some of our weekly FaceTime conversations dealt with more pressing concerns – most notably the frat rush. When Jack called us to vent, he had already turned down a bid, or invitation to join. (We were delighted that he made the decision without us.) Because of the eight-hour time difference, these calls couldn’t always be as spontaneous as Jack would have liked, and we were all frustrated when quirky Wi-Fi systems interrupted them. But apart from that, he would later tell us, nothing was different than it would have been with us back in Brooklyn.

I am proud that Jack is now a thriving sophomore, doing well academically and killing it as a sports reporter for the college newspaper and TV station. Most importantly, he is learning to live in a community that doesn’t consist solely of his two adoring parents.

Postscript: My son, seeing this article posted in anticipation of the holiday, on my personal Facebook page, read it quickly and panicked, thinking Mother's Day had already passed and that he had forgotten it. (He was in the middle of exams.) Suddenly I received a text from him that said, "I love you so much!" In effect, I got an advance on Mother's Day.

Deborah L. Jacobs is the author most recently of Four Seasons in a Day: Travel, Transitions and Letting Go of the Place We Call Home, from which this essay is adapted. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.