Childhood is fleeting – for kids, and their parents.
Last week I had a “pay attention” moment as a parent. My 8-year-old daughter was standing in the kitchen, eating pickles from a jar and sharing them with her toddler sister. The older of the two, my firstborn, has always loved pickles and my mind flashed back to a time when she was the fuzzy-haired, towheaded toddler, waiting for me to hand her a spear. In the present moment, I watched her open the fridge, pull out the jar, open it, share it, get both herself and her sister a drink, and then return the jar to the fridge. She walked over the sink and rinsed her hands of the sour stuff and then scooped up all of her “stuffies” — an array of stuffed animals that seem to follow her all day long when she’s home.
I was struck by the dichotomy of the scene. In so many ways, she is so grown up. Intelligent. Well-spoken. Independent. Kind. Sometimes emotional. I’m not sure of the exact moment she stopped being a little girl but she is a full-fledged young woman now. Yet there are still traces of childhood that hang on her, surprising me in the moments when I’m wondering where the time has gone.
Childhood is short. I’m realizing this now.
How did she go from that chubby, toddling little one to the person I barely recognize sometimes? Her next birthday will mark the halfway point to adulthood. How does that happen, and so fast?
There are all of these sub-groups of growing up — babies, toddlers, ‘tweens, preteens, teens — but there’s a really important, really special time that tends to get glossed over as parents brace themselves for puberty. It’s an age where our kids are old enough to exercise some independence but are still just kids, untouched by the ugliness of the world and still optimistic about it.
I’ve realized very profoundly lately that this phase of parenting, as my firstborn prepares to exit her true childhood, is fleeting. Soon there will be days when she’s too busy with her own schedule to share pickles with her sister, or recite all the lines of her favorite movie to me (repeatedly). There will be days when I’m not her favorite person — when she doesn’t trust that I have her best interest at heart, without question. She’ll face heartbreak and rejection and disappointments. Her body will change and her hormones along with it. She’ll need a bra, and braces, and zit cream. I’ll have to change the way I parent her and I’ll mess up sometimes.
I’ll say that I’m worried about her but mostly I’ll be worried about me. Did I do enough in those early years to give her confidence to coast through the ‘tween, pre-teen and teen years? Will she be a happy adult? When her stuffies have been replaced with purses and my car keys — will she still rush home to tell me about her day?
For now I have the gift of a little more time to enjoy this child, my first one, before she’s closer to adulthood than babyhood. This in-between time is beautiful but short. I want to make it count.
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