In looking back over the past 18 years as my son grew up, I find it interesting to think about the process of maturation.      When my son was a baby, he looked up to my wife and me as the all-powerful, all-knowing sources of the necessities of his life. I expect that this sort of attitude is instinctive in any species, a natural outgrowth of the process known as “imprinting”. While he was growing up, I made every effort to live up to the trust he put in me, giving him all the training I could think of for handling life in this complex, heartless world -- just as any loving parent ought to do.      One of the hardest parts of this progress for me was the fact that I was viewed by my son as something like a god. For the first several years, most of what I said was accepted as laws.      Still, I tried to keep in mind that I had a goal to reach: helping my son become a man capable of handling life on his own by the time he reached college age.      With this goal in mind, I made efforts to help him learn how to think for himself. It wasn.t an easy task, and there were many times when I found myself being upset that my child didn’t think or act independently. Still, I managed to keep my reactions under control most of the time. In the last year of high school, he wanted to be increasingly independent and moved out. This put me into a dilemma: while I knew I should start letting him go, I found myself instead wanting to turn back the clock, to regain the control and absolute trust I had got used to when he was younger.      There were conflicts over the breaking of rules, as one would pretty much expect when dealing with a teenager. In some cases, these conflicts were unavoidable, as I could see my son moving on a path that I know would be right.      Overall, I think we have gone through the process of maturation successfully. The most important part of this is that he is not dependent upon his parents for the basic ability to make decisions and get along in life.（10分）