Imagine my surprise when I came home from a recent trip and discovered a nasty substance coating the bathroom sink and clogging the drain. By the time they hit the age of 3, most kids know that dumping food in the bathroom sink is not OK, so with only teens and adults living in our house, I was puzzled. Then I remembered my husband mentioning that our 13 year-old gave herself an oatmeal mask earlier in the day — to perk up her perfectly fresh face. Apparently she had “forgotten” what she once knew.
It wasn’t just annoyance that I felt when I realized the culprit, but a trickle of recognition as well. This was just the latest of many signals we’ve gotten recently that she’s entering a different, yet familiar phase: With so many changes going on in her head and body, this bright beam of sunshine is frequently clouded over, much like when she was 9 months old and on the verge of learning to walk — cranky, preoccupied and sleepless until she finally took the first steps. Our early adolescent is going through a new version of the learning-to-walk phase, only this time, her steps will take her toward the door.
In this issue we write about an impressive array of community organizations focusing on early learning, working to see that all kids ages birth to 5 are provided what they need to thrive emotionally and academically. Much of that effort is focused on parent education, because parents are also early (as well as middle and late) learners, with our kids regularly presenting another “learning moment.” You barely catch on to one phase when your child moves onto the next. With seven kids in our blended family, you think I’d be a PhD candidate in parenting but always, I’m uncertain if I’ve got the “right” answer to the latest challenging situation. Any sense of mastering the art of parenting is only a brief delusion, quickly dashed by the next encounter with your kid.
At least we get plenty of opportunities to practice. Parenting is not so much travelling with our kids on a long road to adulthood, but rather moving in circles with them, encountering again and again the same situation, just with a bigger kid. When I discovered the oatmeal in the sink, I was just back from visiting my 25-year-old in NYC. She is thriving in the new home she’s created for herself, but I choked back tears in the taxi to the airport as the miles between us grew.
At the end of the long plane ride I asked the woman sitting next to me what brought her to Seattle. She was from New York, she explained, but her daughter and her grandchildren live in Seattle now, so she was on one of her twice-a-year visits. I told her I had just left my daughter, who shows signs of wanting to settle on the East Coast. As she walked off the plane she said in sympathy, “Lots of luck to you. Get ready for many plane rides.” And she headed off to visit her daughter as I headed home without mine, grappling with a new version of a very familiar situation, much like the first day I left her in kindergarten, only this time a bigger kid and greater distance.
