There are army toys strewn throughout the house, and ear buds on his bed. There’s a baby comb in the bathroom next to the hair gel he occasionally uses too much of. He wants a new hot wheel track and in the same breadth asks for a new video game. He won’t walk down a dark hallway by himself, and yet increasingly wants privacy for dressing, etc. He cuddles up with us on the coach at night, but is subtler with his affections around others.
As we approach his eleventh birthday, the juxtaposition between his boyhood and emerging tweenhood is with us every day. We notice his burgeoning independence around his own self-care and yet his boyhood ignorance of appearance is evident on his shirt and dirty knees! He navigates many things without help and yet still requests my company to lie down with him as he settles in to sleep. Subtle and not subtle signs are here, indicating that change is coming… and that it is not yet here. We are in- between.
As an admittedly overly sentimental person (I will absurdly never get rid of that baby comb for example) the in-between is an interesting place to be as a parent. It is delightful, on the one hand, to be needed less for his own self-care, to see his increasing mastery of things and the pride it brings him. And at the same time, the in-between leaves me with twinges of sadness of what we are leaving behind and some uncertainty of what lies ahead.
I wonder how he will experience his impending adolescence. Will he reject our affections completely? Will he turn his nose up at our routine weekend nature walks? Will he decide he is too old for bedtime stories? Will he no longer invite me into his twilight thoughts as I lie next to him? My next line of thinking turns inward – how will I navigate his important and developmental need to push away, push back to test out his autonomy? Is there a way to prepare for that? Is there a way to shore myself up to not be triggered by his seeming adolescent rejection? I suspect it is like most things in parenting, or at least my experience of parenting; you anticipate, you declare how you will handle things (perhaps differently than your own parents), you might even read a book or blog or two. And then reality hits and you bumble your way through as you face what you couldn’t have anticipated and find that things are harder, and easier, than expected. So you just wing it imperfectly. Time will undoubtedly tell.
Knowing that I am prone to holding on to what was, I have been conscious and intentional in my embracing of the letting go. I encourage his increasing independence and confidence therein, and remind myself regularly to ask more of him, to push him towards self-sufficiency and household contributions, (which is sometimes met with an “on the other side” sulk). Yet at every turn being available with open arms for when he crosses over the in-between into the safety of our literal and figurative arms. Holding on, letting go, slowly down, enjoying what is, thinking fondly of what was, and marveling at what’s to come. The beautiful in-between.
Spin Cycle 