The first time I heard the psychological term “rapprochement,” I was a college sophomore knee-deep in the study of early childhood development. The term, coined by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in the early part of the 20th century, refers to a phase of a toddler’s development between 16 and 24 months, when the child dances back and forth between autonomy and dependence.

“It may be scary out here, but I like it,” is how psychologists think of this waltz.

At the time, when I worked as a student teacher with children who were that age, I thought of rapprochement as a limited stage in cognitive development. Later on, as a parent, I experienced my own toddler’s textbook display of this behavior. He was bursting with his newfound independence one minute, and clingy and unwilling to let me out of sight the next.

But as my brood gets older, I am learning that rapprochement is a dance our children carry out with their parents long after the toddler years. The dance of letting go and holding on lasts a lifetime. Just as our children grow from 3 feet to 4 to 5, just as their voices change and their breasts develop, so too does their need to alternatively let go and cleave fast.

A few weeks ago, my 6-year-old son politely and comfortably asked me to stop kissing him. Not just in front of other people, but altogether. I must admit to feeling a bit bent out of shape. It seemed too soon for him to be embarrassed by my kisses. But I did my best to cover up my momentary dejection. I told him that I was okay with that – as long as I got lots of hugs.

When my instincts tell me to squeeze him and give him a kiss, I remind myself of the moment almost every evening when this same 6-year-old boy fights his brother and sister for a spot on my lap. He cuddles up, rests his head against my shoulder, and tells me a small detail from his day, some chess move he made, or some new trick he learned in math.

But sometimes before I go to bed, while he sleeps peacefully in his room, I cannot resist the velvety feel of his cheeks. For a moment I snuggle next to him and plant a kiss or two on his face. I know better than to allow him to see the difficulty I have in letting him go – it is enough for him to master his own rapprochement.

I’ve heard friends with children a few years older than mine discuss the appropriate age to let their children travel to and from school by themselves. The kids are dying to walk and ride the bus with friends, and I can hear the ambivalence in their parents’ voices. “I know she’s ready and excited,” said a friend with a 10-year-old, “but I can also tell she’s nervous. Not that she’d tell me that. And surprise, surprise, I’m nervous too. I have to resist the urge to follow her.”

Sometimes, on the surface at least, we are the ones who have the most difficulty letting go. But from my friends with teenagers, I hear stories where the parents, in the heat of the moment, are ready to throw their children out the window. Talk about being ready to let go. “The doors are slamming, the cigarettes are being found, the clothes are outrageous, and the answers to my questions are monosyllabic. How many more years until college?” laughed a friend with a daughter in high school.

For teenagers, the dance of rapprochement alternates between challenging behavior in one moment and then conciliatory behavior the next. For this friend, it is also late at night – just as with my 6-year-old – that her daughter will sometimes turn to her for steady moorings. Her daughter loses the know-it-all tone of voice and actually communicates with her mother. And sometimes she even curls up in her parents’ bed and puts her head on her mother’s chest. I still need to be taken care of, she seems to be saying.

The truth is that this dance, this rapprochement, continues for as long as one’s parents are alive, or in good health. When the 22-year-old decides to move in with the inappropriate partner – that is rapprochement. And so it is when the 35-year-old gets into a car accident and wants her mother to take of her.

This is why it is still such a loss for a 50-year-old, with kids in college and a successful career on Wall Street, when his 85-year-old parent dies. Having children, and even having grown children, may make us responsible adults, but having our parents alive is a luxurious emotional safety net that many of us don’t realize we have until it is gone.

The need to return to a safe place, a haven, is fundamental to progression in human development. And this progression takes place at 2, 12, 20, and 40. It is in our arms – literal or figurative – that our children are able to recharge their batteries and find the reassurances they need to take steps forward. Growth is not linear – it takes place in leaps and bounds.

Of all people, we parents, can attest to that.