A little earthquake happened in our house this week. The cause? Barbie movies. I know this sounds absurd but it isn’t. You see, we own approximately five million, two-hundred-sixty-bajillion Barbie movies in our house and each of them have been watched more than infinity times. If you don’t have little girls, you wouldn’t know this, but Barbie movies are cinematic travesties wherein Barbie comes to life as a cartoon. Barbie and all her friends have a weird “Children of the Corn” vibe because the animation is truly terrible and low-budget. However, Barbie and all her BFFs exhibit true badassity in every movie. They conquer evil male chauvinist villains, do karate, save orphans and rescue good mermaid queens from curses. Little girls loooooooove this stuff and mine consumed these movies like true addicts. So this week, when my youngest daughter said, “Mom, we don’t want these Barbie movies anymore. You can sell them,” the ground moved a little under my feet and I had a moment of parenting vertigo.
Family life happens like that. You hit a particular stage and you figure out how to manage it. You then start to coast and everything is so incredibly predictable. Eventually, that comfortable stage is unexpectedly over and some tiny thing happens to let you know. You can feel in your gut that it is time to let go and move on. There is a weird elixir of joy, expectation, anxiety and sadness that rises in your throat in those moments. The Barbie movie comment was that kind of moment for me. “Oh my gosh,” I thought. “The little kid stage is done. We need to shed some things and change expectations.” Deep breath. I’ll spend part of next week donating the last of the pink and purple thermoses with little straws. I’ll retrain the part of my brain that heads towards the kid’s shoe section when we need Easter sandals (my girls are both into ladies’ sizes now). I won’t expect our toy baskets to fill up with kid tidbits anymore. Bouncy balls, Barbie shoes, little colorful pebbles and tiny doll hair brushes stopped flowing into the house about ten months ago but I hadn’t noticed. Also, when was the last time someone randomly came downstairs dressed in ratty princess costume? Geez, it has to have been two years. Time to toss Belle into the great beyond and thank her for her service to our family.
It is also time to reflect. At the end of a little era, I always ask myself: What lessons did this stage teach me? Is there anything I would do differently if I had this slice of life to do over again? I wanted to share these lessons with you in case they might help you enjoy your little peanuts more and help you make different mistakes than I did.
First, if I had it to do over again, I would chill out about elementary school performance. This is a toughie because the elementary years are building blocks for all the other higher, harder years of school. Also, you certainly don’t want to disrespect the efforts of elementary school teachers. Their work is not easy. In addition, setting high expectations early means your kids know you have full confidence in them. But geez, can I just tell you how much harder middle school is? Middle school kids pay dire consequences for absences. The stack of make-up homework generated by my older daughter’s recent two day absence was the size of a small, sturdy step stool. Tears were shed. Bedtime was after midnight. Also, towards the end of middle school, grades start to matter if your child wants to apply to a private school or be in advanced classes in high school. All of the sudden, a D on a test is not just a “learning moment.” So if I had it to do over, I would go on more vacations where the kids miss a few days of elementary school. I would steal some precious minutes back from the school district without an ounce of guilt. I would unclench my jaw a little when they fail a test and help instead of worry or scold. I’d give them more leeway to be little because now I know that a tidal wave of work will hit them soon enough and the waves will only keep getting bigger.
Second, I’d try hard to soak in how cute they are. Right at this moment, parents of littles, you think you know how incredibly precious and dear your child is. You have a zillion snapshots to prove it! Trust me. You don’t. They are so much cuter and younger than you can ever realize in the moment. Your oldest child is always the oldest child you’ve ever had at any given time so naturally you think, “This child is sooo big! They need to be doing their chores and I should only have to ask once! After all, he/she is nearly seven!” Then five years later, Facebook will put a flashback picture into your timeline of that same six-year-old and you will think, “Holy smokes! Look at those cheeks and that tiny outfit! How did I ever get mad at this baby?” I promise this is true. So take all the pictures you want and give the extra cookie and hand out all the hugs they need every time they ask. You are right. You have the most beautiful child on the planet. However, you won’t know how stinking cute they were until they start needing to wear deodorant and they want electronics instead of Barbies for Christmas.
Finally, if I could talk to myself as a younger mom, I’d tell younger me to have more hope in the dark moments of parenting. I’d tell myself to exhale because even if you do it all wrong some days, time and growth have a way of fixing behaviors that seem immovable at the time. In other words, it isn’t all up to you because good parenting isn’t always the solution. Sometimes they just need to grow and the ship rights itself. For instance, my older daughter struggled mightily with sensory processing issues when she was younger. In particular, we had clothing wars. Anything but the softest t-shirt and the most roomy yoga pants sent her over the edge and lead to epic tantrums. These struggles meant no jeans or khakis, no skirts, no socks and no dress shoes for my girl. They also meant she couldn’t try dance (tights!), or ice skating (too tight!) or any other sport that required form-fitting gear. I was heartbroken and we tried everything. We did time-intensive occupational therapy. We created elaborate reward systems for trying on new items of clothing without melting down. We bought special, expensive leggings and socks with no seams. In the end, these endeavors yielded only minor improvements and I felt totally inadequate to help her as she suffered constant discomfort. You know what eventually happened as I was busy punishing myself mentally for my lack of solutions? She grew up. She eventually started to like regular, cheapo leggings. She fell in love with ice skating and her brain matured to the point where she could regulate her discomfort enough to enjoy it. This year, at age twelve, she miraculously started wearing jeans like it was no big deal. I never thought I would see this day. I honestly shed more than one tear of sheer relief when she walked out the door for the first time in a pair of American Eagle skinnies. I, personally, have found it comforting to realize that my kids’ lives naturally expand and their maturity deepens even when I throw up my hands and give myself a break. There is true peace and grace to be had in that spot.
In the end, you are doing so much better than you think. Your kids believe you hung the moon but you cannot possibly see it because you are too busy worrying about reading logs and dance clinics and how many gray hairs they have actually given you and why they think fruit roll up wrappers are suitable coffee table accessories. Exhale. They are works in progress and so are you. That’s how it looks when you are doing it right.
If you want to cry happy tears, watch the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLRs29PmOmg
Chuck Barnes says
Always wise, always wonderful…always Amy. What a blessing she is ….