Our Mommyhood

Posts Tagged ‘kids growing up’

By Mama M, Contributor, My Little Life (@5CrookedHalos)

I need to see a show of hands.  All of you who’ve ever seen a child off to high school, raise your hands.

Okay, good.

Now that you’ve identified yourselves, let’s talk.

My baby. Well, not really my baby, but you know what I mean…metaphorically speaking (because he’ll always be my baby).  He’s headed off to 9th grade and I’m freaked out!

I think what I’m most afraid of is knowing when to let go. Knowing when to just trust that I’ve done my job and that he will make good decisions. Lord knows I didn’t make good decisions when I was his age, so I’m hoping I steered him right.

Do I still call every parent when he says he’s going to their house, or do I trust that he is truthful and honest? And even if I do call every parent, how can I trust that they are truthful and honest?

Well all know of the parents who would fib and cover for us when we were younger.  But how do I know which of his friends’ parents will be those parents?

And the girls? It’s starting. When I’m out and about, I’ve really been paying attention lately, and man alive, any girl who appears to be his age (which probably means they’re actually about 11…dang girls mature so fast!) sure pauses and looks when we walk passed.

Being that he’s walking right beside me, I can’t see all of the looking he does to the many girls we pass along the way. And honestly, I don’t really want to know.

So, experienced mamas, tell me your thoughts, ideas and advice.  I’m all ears and eager to learn!!

How do you find a balance between being a careful, concerned mother and being overbearing and overprotective?

By Lori, Guest Writer, In Pursuit of Martha Points (@marthapoints)

Years, that is.

Look at your toddler, your kidlet, your worldly seven-year-old…

And add 10 years.

You can’t do it. Your brain can’t look at your son’s little face with the wee chubby cheeks and imagine it covered in scraggly stubble. You can’t look at your daughter’s tender, silky-fine curls and imaging them flattened in a straight-iron.

You can’t sit across from the toddler who you are begging, bargaining, bribing or browbeating into eating and imagine that one day you will be yelling at him for inhaling your dinner ingredients as an afternoon snack.

Yet it will happen.

Your carpet of rainbow-hued plastic toys will be gradually replaced with books, binders, CD’s, sweatsocks, nail-polish bottles, iPod cords, jump drives and shoes the size of Volkswagons.

The sing-song cartoons that make you nauseous with their cloying sweetness will someday be replaced by battling-ogre videogames that will make you nauseous with their graphic bloodbath-ness.

The struggles over brushing teeth and saying please and thank you will give way to struggles over sharing the bathroom and saying anything.

It’s inconceivable, yet we know in our cells it’s inevitable, that these round faces, soft limbs and high voices will grow, evolving height, weight, heft and attitude. And the compulsion to hold tight, squeeze hard and freeze time almost makes your heart stop.

Unless you are still changing diapers, in which case the world isn’t orbiting the sun fast enough.

When your back aches now for bending over them, you can’t appreciate that eventually your neck will hurt for looking up at them. When you’re worried that they won’t make friends in elementary school it’s difficult to envision that you will long for a house free from the herd of starving elephants they call their friends when they are in high school.

But there are some advantages with teens. You can leave the house…without them. In fact, there’s a good chance that anywhere you want to go, they don’t. They can actually help with chores and housework in a way that is productive and meaningful, and not simply an exercise in “learning responsibility.”

At some point, their math homework will probably become too much for you, but that’s what lunch-hour appointments with the algebra teacher are for, and if their English assignment term papers are soggy with teen-age angst, that’s really their instructor’s bath to wade through, not yours.

As they get older, they show you magical glimpses of the people they will become. It becomes less about potential and more about reality. They think big things (which in their minds are always bigger than they really are), they dream big dreams (which they are certain no one ever dreamed before) and their ability to share their visions with you becomes more articulate and more sophisticated than you thought – at times – they were capable of. You will stare in slack-jawed amazement as the child who doesn’t remember how to operate a washing machine explains why water reclamation is critical to the survival of the species.

You do not stop being afraid for them, you just become fearful of different things. You do not stop wanting to wrap your arms around them and keep away anything that might hurt them, you just force yourself not to.

When they’re small, and you look at them in panic when you realize that they are growing and this precious wee thing is going to leave you, remind yourself of the amazing adult they will be when they are grown. You are not losing your small child, you are growing a later friend.

That huge-eyed, whispy-haired, rosy-cheeked, chubby-hands munchkin who wrote “I love you Momy” with the “e” reversed in the Mother’s Day card will still be tucked away in that teenager, lurking somewhere behind the spleen or left kidney. And that child will hide in the folds of the adult they will become, sharing space with the other used-to-be-me’s that live inside us all. And don’t worry, they will visit from time to time.

I had no reason to expect the arrival of my daughter would be any different. I had no idea I would yearn for the blissful ignorance of having a healthy, full term baby. You see, when my daughter was born so, so early and so, so tiny, I found myself thrust into world I knew existed but never expected to enter. Becoming the mom of a preemie means entry into club that no one wants to be a part of. Instead of money, dues are paid in learning medical terminology, explaining the meaning of “adjusted age” to everyone you meet, and redefining your understanding of the word strength.

Being a preemie mom means stumbling over hurdles you don’t really know how to face, comparing your child to other “normal” babies her age, and at times railing against the unfairness of it all. Being a preemie mom fosters a fierce sense of determination to make sure your child is well, that she misses out on nothing, that her life is a rich and full as it possibly can be. Because with preemies sometimes you just don’t know. You don’t know what the future holds. You don’t know what the setbacks might be or the full range of the complications that could be in store. With the not knowing comes a great deal of fist shaking with an “I’ll show YOU” attitude. There are vows to your precious child and promises to God. Bargains, all, to just make your child well. Normal. Caught up.

My daughter has made such incredible strides in her short little life. She’s fought battles and overcome more adversity in ten and a half months than a lot of people do in a lifetime. My wish for her is to grow and grow, to thrive, to continue to amaze us with her strength, fortitude, and beauty. My wish for her is to reach her milestones, go to school, fall in love, get married, and fill her house with children of her own. I wish that for both of my babies. I wish for them a life full of joy and wonder. I wish for them to flourish.

Someday, my children will have finished growing. They’ll have babies of their own. And when they do? I’ll whisper in their ears, “Savor it, my sweet babies, for you’ll be astounded at how quickly they grow. And though you may sometimes wish otherwise, you don’t want to keep them tiny forever. Nothing compares to the magic of watching them grow up.”

 

Stephanie is a stay at home mom to Joshua and Ella. She writes daily at Mama Still Wears Gucci,where she discusses everything from a radical obsession with vacuuming the draperies to vying (peacefully of course) for total world domination.