Early in the post-pandemic days, I caught up with a friend that I hadn’t talked to in a long time. It’s always nice reconnecting. She is younger than me, and, as a result, she has younger children. My sons are young men, so the ups and downs of early childhood are just a memory for me now. My friend is living them, and she told me a story of a recent milestone. She took her four-year-old daughter with her to a friend’s house, and her daughter and her friend ran off to play while the moms sat down and hung out. Like adults do. With adult conversation and now toddlers to chase after and mind. She said the experience was fantastic and felt like something totally foreign and new. Between the demands of early parenthood and this pandemic that has kept us away from one another for so long, the milestone snuck up on her.
I remember having a toddler that wanted nothing more than to be included with his older cousins. The older kids would run off to the game room in my brother’s house, and my son would take off after them. I used to joke that it was a little like Lord of the Flies up in that space. So, I’d let me son go…but I would tag along. I’d hover, I guess you could say. I did this for so long that I forgot what it was like to sit with my brother, my sister-in-law, my parents…any adults, really. My wife and I would switch off, but there was always that distraction, the need to keep eyes and ears open for any sign that your little one was in peril.
Along came our second son, and, with him, a few more years of that hyper-vigilance.
One day, it ended. The youngest ran off with our oldest, and there we were, adult parents once again. My friend’s story really resonated with me for the obvious reason of shared experience, but it also hit me that I am, once again, in the same position. In fact, as I told my friend, this milestone, the feeling of letting go and letting your child run off to be themselves and do their own thing, is a repeating pattern. I told her she’d experience it again and again, in different ways. Regardless, the need to let go so that your children can run off and go do their own thing, be their own person, repeats itself. I can only hope and pray for her and her children that they can live through this painful cycle over and over again.
Yes, it’s a painful cycle because each time it comes, it means that your child is growing up, moving on, and taking their place in the world. While it is precisely what we wish for when we raise our children, it is a joy and blessing that is not without sacrifice. Ultimately, parenthood is about all the little sacrifices you make along the way to put your child on the path to their own adult experience.
So, here I am, once again finding myself confronted with the need to let go so both of my sons can run off to be themselves and do their own thing, this time as men, not little boys or big boys or teenagers. There’s still time to hang on to the stages my sons are in. The letting go, though, is inevitable.
Illuminate Possibilities 