Ask me when my daughter took her first steps and I can tell you, with incredible precision, exactly when it was. Ask me where the last 10 years of her life have sped to, and I couldn’t begin to explain.
It almost feels like she went to bed a toddler one evening, and woke up a tween the next morning.
This is the lament of every parent. Our children seem to grow up quicker than we can catch up, and nothing brings this home more than the sudden metamorphosis from child to tween.
Warp Drive Enabled
I remember uttering the words “I can’t wait until she can talk” while I rocked my colic-battling kid to sleep one night.
Sometimes, the baby days felt frustrating, because I couldn’t figure out what was wrong when she cried. But that’s a skill you learn over time.
Sometimes I wish I still had that skill. Now that she’s older and can talk, it’s not any easier.
The School Circle
The journey to primary school is imbued with hope and excitement. As children’s natural curiosity makes them excited to learn, parents dream of what their progeny will become. I was, and am still, one of those parents.
My daughter will tell me her grand career ideas, and I get overzealous about them. Fast forward a week, when I’ve mentally redecorated the home of a future architect, and she’s changed her mind and would like to become a paleontologist. Bang go those posters of the Eiffel Tower.
Learning What She Likes
This is a tough one, and it’s something I try hard to remember, even when I want to throw my hands up in despair.
My daughter will like things I have little or no interest in, and I have to be enthusiastic. While I may wish for her to carve a niche in the world of words, she’s more of a reader than a writer.
She’s also a more astute mathematician than I will ever be, which leaves me puzzling over her Maths homework while she easily calculates 154 divided by 8.
Giving her space to love and enjoy the things that make her heart sing is tough, but it’s an essential part of growing up.
Growing Up and Growing Away
My mom used to tell me there’s a point in a child’s life where they stop “growing up” and start “growing away”.
This isn’t a bad thing, as it’s then that an individual learns their likes and dislikes, discovers what makes them happy and uncovers their unique talents.
I always knew this time would come, but fobbed it off as a “future” problem. But the “Growing Away From” phase has started sooner than I envisioned, as my child starts having a social life that isn’t dictated solely by me, and the play date invitations begin pouring in from her school friends.
Communicating beyond the Mundane
Checking in with my kid on how she’s doing, or if something appears to be bugging her, is harder than ever.
Not that this is a deterrent (in fact, it makes me even more determined to know what’s going on in her head!), but it is quite jarring when it first happens. Or the second time, and the third.
As a sweet pre-schooler, she would rush in with stories about what happened on the playground. Now I often feel I have to pull information out of her head.
So we made a new rule, that if she is frightened to talk to me about something, she can simply write it down.
It’s opened new avenues, as we explore a brand new way of sharing our days.
But every now and then, I look at the tall girl across from me at the dinner table, and I swear, she was just a toddler yesterday.
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