A Rite of Passage

A few years ago, I don’t know if I blogged about it here, Emma (my youngest, then 15 or so) came home with a new boyfriend. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t think why … until I met his mother.

We looked at each other in stunned recognition. “Pat?!” “Mary?!” Then we looked at our children, a second time, astonishment on our faces.

“You mean, that’s Kevin??”
“And that’s little Emma?!”

Yes, indeed. Emma was dating a former daycare client. It’s a rite of passage of a sort, in my business. I had cleaned that young man’s little butt, once upon a time. (Strangely, neither Emma nor Kevin found that little tidbit nearly as entertaining as we two mothers. Mwah-ha.)

I have an interview tonight. Nothing exceptional about that, except …

The young mother? She used to help out in the daycare. When she was seventeen.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

Now she is thirty-two, with a career, a husband … and with a four-month-old baby. Who will need care starting November. Thirty-two. Not even a barely-adult twenty-something. She’s over thirty. An established adult.

Wow.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she says, “but I’ve remembered you often through the years. I learned so much from you, stuff that I’ve applied in my career. How you motivated the children, how you got them working together. People are people, no matter how old they are.”

Wow. I guess she won’t be asking for referrals.

I’m really excited! I hope it works out. Wouldn’t that just be too cool for words?

Watching your kids grow

Sentimentality. A little sentiment can be a sweet addition to your life: the ability to conjure up the whole lovely vacation when you look at a single pretty pebble picked up from a hiking trail; a fond remembrance, a wave of affection, a wisp of nostalgia. Nothing wrong with any of that, in fact, an enrichment to a contented life.

If you can’t find your dressing table because of the trinkets, if your kitchen is buried under kid art, if your dining room a mere tunnel through stacks of treasured mementos… You have a problem.

It’s about balance and perspective.

It’s September, and with it the wave of back-to-school posts. Among them, the “my baby just went to school for the first time” posts. And among them, among the sweet posts filled with anticipation, excitement, and a little wistfulness, were the FULL-ON PANIC posts.

“My baybeeeee! My baby is leeeeeeaving me! My baby is — heaven forbid! — GROWING UP.”

Goodness, ladies. Get a grip.

Wistfulness is understandable. It’s a rite of passage, a demarcation of the end of one thing and the beginning of the next. So you pack their lunch with special care, you dress them carefully, and maybe even take a few pictures. Wistfulness and possibly some fear. You watch them pass through the doors of the school (or the school bus), and hope that the institution that is swallowing them is kind, that their time there is happy. Not everyone has a happy time there. So yes, wistfulness and some level of anxiety and protectiveness, certainly.

But full-on panic? Reams of words deploring the child’s absence, wondering how mum is going to cope, and mostly, always, consistently, ruing, decrying, resisting, mourning the fact that their baby is growing up.

Um. Growing up. Well, yes. Isn’t that the point? The idea of having a baby my whole life long fills me with horror (and also immense respect for parents of handicapped children, for whom that may be their practical life reality.) Do you really want to be the parent of a baby for the rest of your life?

School is an obvious example right now, but you see this all the time, mothers (have yet to see a dad write one of these posts) writing about all sorts of stages in their children’s lives, and every time the reaction is fear, resistance, regret, and denial that their baby could be growing up, changing. (And ultimately leaving them? Is that the root fear?)

Wistfulness is fine. A little sentimental nostalgia, recalling that moment you held their sticky body for the first time… knowing that is gone, never to return. Who wouldn’t sigh a little sigh for that? There is nothing as soft as a baby’s skin, nothing as delightful as the bubbling river of baby giggles. The fat little thighs! The dimples instead of knuckles on pudgy fists! Awwwww… So sure, a little gentle wistfulness for the speed of life. But why choose to get stuck there?

So, savour the wistfulness… and also, here’s a thought… how about excitement? Anticipation? Optimism? Sure, with each stage there are things you leave behind. (Not always a bad thing, say I, as not-so-wistful memories of a screaming colicky baby and months of bleary-eyed exhaustion swim through my head.)

But along with the things you leave behind, there are things you’re gaining. Always. With every stage come new things to treasure and savour. The Panic Moms seem oblivious to that. All the phases and stages, all the passages… they’re just bad. Bad, points of regret and sorrow and grieving.

And really, if that’s how you see it, if your child’s growth is one long chain of points of mourning for the things lost… why on earth did you have a child?

Thing about kids, see, is that they GROW.

They grow up, they learn to do stuff, they move on. It never stops. One thing after another. One accomplishment after another. One new discovery, another broadening of their capabilities, an enrichment of their worlds. It never stops.

Another, and another, and another thing…
to marvel in.
To take pride in.
To CELEBRATE!

You mourning mummies? I suggest a paradigm shift. You, and possibly your children, will be much happier for it.

Hello, Goodbye

Children come and go in a daycare. Typically, they start with me at 12 months, give or take, and leave when they start junior kindergarten, about three and a half. Kindergarten in this city is half-day. Many of my clients would have been happy to keep their children with me during junior and senior kindergarten, except that I do not go to the bus stop. Lots of caregivers do, I know, but the thought of getting the other four children out the door to trudge ten minutes up the street so we can stand at a bus stop for ten minutes in the frigid February gloom before trudging the ten minute home, does not appeal to me in the slightest.

So I’ve never done it. A couple of parents opted to leave their children with me until grade one. Two extra years of full-time daycare. But mostly, when they get to junior kindergarten age, we say goodbye.

People have asked me, “Is it hard? Do you miss them fiercely? Do you cry?” And I have to say… no. Not usually. I know when they start that I’ll have them for a couple of years, and then they’ll move on. I enjoy my time with them, I grow fond of them, and then I say a fond goodbye when our time together is over.

I often stay in touch with a family for two or three years after, but eventually the ties fade. That’s just normal, and I don’t fret over it.

I am much the same way with my own children, for heaven’s sakes. I didn’t chase after the train as it took my eldest off to university. There were no tears of regret, no maternal angst, no panic about how I’ll SURVIVE WITHOUT MY BAYBEEEEE. I keep saying “We’re not raising children, we’re raising adults”, and I mean it. The whole point of the parenting endeavour is to get those kids launched into fully functioning adulthood. I’m supposed to crack, inches from the finish line, pulling them back, “NOOOOO, I’M NOT REEEEEEADY!”?

That’s just silly.

I want them out there. I want them forging ahead, forming their own lives. Lives in which, if I’m not a neurotic, needy lunatic, I’m much more likely to be given a space. I’ll still be their mother. To lose that role would indeed rip me asunder. I’m their mother until one of us dies, but eventually they won’t need a mommy any more. And that’s as it should be.

If I have that attitude about my own, much-beloved children, I’m going to have much the same about my daycare tots. Except that I’m not their mother, and I never anticipated being invited to their weddings. I love them when they’re with me, and then they move on to the next stage in their lives, and I love the ones who take their places. Which is as it should be.

But it is true that some children get under your skin and into your heart. Emily is one such. I love Tyler, too, but it is with Emily that I have a particular bond. Tyler is a fun, busy and friendly, bytimes moody and contrary, little boy. I’ve enjoyed my time with Tyler. He’s sweet and loveable, if a tad memory-challenged. But Emily…

Emily, who has been with me for a full five years. Emily, whose mother took on the school bus company, campaigned for an entire summer, and had them make a stop at my home so the children could be with me for an extra two years.

Emily the silly talker, the kind talker, and the Very Good Talker. Emily the hard-ass big sister, the helpful big sister, the big sister to the masses. Emily the cruise director, the realist, the artist. Emily the empath. She’s a really nice kid, even when she’s ‘bad’.

Emily’s giddy cheerfulness has pulled many a whiny toddler out of the doldrums. She has distracted many a distressed baby, soothed many a bump, organized many games. She keeps me on my toes! She’s good company. She’s just a plain old, genuinely nice person. Smart, funny, creative and kind.

I love Emily. To bits. And in two weeks, she and Tyler will move on from daycare, Emily to start Grade One and Tyler to junior kindergarten in the same school. I will miss them very much.

*sniff*