Boys

I find myself at a tricky time as a parent, and this week said to my longsuffering and quite brilliant husband “we’re on to the hard part now”.

My children; both boys, both hilarious, both loving, are 10 and 11 years old. The eldest will be 12 in 50 days and is about to start secondary school in 53 days.

They’re close in age, just short of 18 months between them, and as such do not remember a time when there weren’t the two of them. They are friends, even when they’re foes, and do a lot for each other.

It was exhausting when they were small. Their little hands and feet and brains working at cross-purposes. I once sat pinned to the sofa by exhaustion and a feeding baby while the toddler ate five bananas in a row. I felt terrible guilt and googled potassium poisoning symptoms, but he was ok. There were scary times, exhausting times and lots of funny times but the banana tableau reminds me how often it was all three.

We’re all in a different place now but today I feel as helpless an ineffectual as I did when I watched my eldest chomp through his five-a-day in 5 minutes. Perhaps today is just a bad day.

We’ve been pretty good at talking about a lot of things to the kids as they’ve grown up. Love, sex, politics, religion. All the major sticking points in life. I hope we have created a family space where they can feel comfortable to ask us questions, talk to us if they’re worried, and share their emerging opinions and preferences. There is nothing that one of them could do or be that would compromise my overwhelming love for them.

Now that we’re at the crunch point (the hard part I mentioned) I’m worried that we haven’t done enough. That they won’t talk to us, that they’ll hold secret concerns in their minds and hearts and there won’t be a damn thing I can do about it. It’s a terrifying and debilitating thought.

As I watch things happen around us, in our home, in the wider community, country and world I want to shield them from it but know that they are in the very act of ‘growing up’. I’ve never wanted to keep them small, I’ve always looked forward to getting to know my adult children, but the process of ‘growing up’ seems brutal.

Facing hard times; tragedy, conflict (inner and outer), confusion and concern is a large part of what they –we all- need to grow up (as well as all the lovely things, but I’m not likely to need to open up about those) but seeing them experience and realise such things is sometimes worse than physical pain. My heart aches for them as they realise some of what it is to be a ‘grown up’.

So, although I don’t want them to remain small and I want them to become my adult children I'd prefer the process to pass by quickly, and smoothly, and preferably without me having to watch.

Perhaps it is me who is growing up.