A Gift of Enormous Measure

“I don’t want to be afraid of my children growing up.”
I kept turning the phrase over in my mind as I lay in bed drifting off to sleep.  My 17-month-old daughter was sound asleep beside me. I ached a little bit when I thought of how tiny she once was, back in those early days when she used to fit in the curve of my arm. Now she seems to take up half the bed. How many ways are there to say, “she’s growing up so fast?” Isn’t that all parents ever seem to say?
My first children were twins. When I found out I was pregnant with a singleton I looked forward to nursing one baby at a time, holding her in stillness, getting to spend one-on-one time rather than running back and forth between putting out fires. After she was born, I marveled at how easy it was to hold and feed her and sank into the satisfaction of being able to meet her needs as they arose rather than asking her to wait in line behind another sibling. When nap time came I would put her in the carrier and hold her close to my chest, swaying back and forth until she fell asleep slobbering on my shirt. It was all so tender, holding one baby at a time. If you’ve had children you know how it goes. I blinked and then she was crawling. Now she walks along beside me, her tiny little hand wraps easily around my ring and pinky fingers. She points out cats and birds and likes to hide things under pillows and then pull them out exclaiming, “dere is!”
It rained all day today, and the early, dark evenings make it clear winter is here. Things will slow down a little, or at least the early dusk would have us think so. Holidays will give us extra time together with family and perhaps a snow day or two will keep us all inside on the couch. But nothing ever really slows down when you have young children at home. Even in winter.
I don’t think I’ll give birth to any more children, which makes my daughter the baby of the family. Presumably she’s the one I’ll find hardest to let go. I recently discovered something called “RIE parenting.” The REI stands for “Resources for Infant Educators.” Titles for concepts of parenting usually get on my nerves, and this title is no exception. I mean, parenting isn’t a theory. It’s a moment to moment ever-evolving state of being. That said, we need words and phrases to help us name ideas and concepts, and those phrases give us the tools to turn these ideas and concepts over in our minds. We can’t challenge our misconceptions if we can’t name alternatives. Such is my frustration with the gap between language and experience, I guess.
Anyway, here is the basic tenant of RIE: “We not only respect babies, we demonstrate our respect every time we interact with them. Respecting a child means treating even the youngest infant as a unique human being, not as an object.”  Even the youngest babies are seen as active players in their own lives. There is an inherent trust there, a willingness to see the complete and whole person way before their little legs can stand.
I’m not writing this column to expose all the ways of this school of thought, but you can find plenty of resources online by googling the phrase. (Magda Gerber and Janet Lansbury are some of the most well known authors who have fleshed out these ideas into article and book form). The more I read the more I realized this was the kind of parenting I’ve been attempting to practice. I just didn’t know it had a name. Part of why I’d latched on to this idea was that I am hyperaware that any attempts to hem my children in would likely only backfire. I’m not one of those parents who can’t wait for the kids to get grown. While I do enjoy time to myself, I don’t find my greatest enjoyment in my time away from them. I love my life with my children. It’s life-affirming, and it’s the most beautiful, difficult, challenging, eye-opening experience I have ever known. But I don’t want to be someone who needs my children to be children. I want my children to be themselves. And everyday they are becoming more and more of who they are.
I remember as a child feeling excitement as I grew older, that budding independence like sparks everywhere. If I am so lucky, my children will feel that too, and I want to find ways to be there for them. Not be there broken-hearted, begrudgingly weeping for the good old days. I want to be there at that very moment in that very moment with the people they are in that very moment. I know that to do that will take some work.
There is a whole world of pressures out there to tell us to lean into a feeling of guilt as our children grow up. We recoil from the pain of it all. But I’m pretty sure that a lot of this is just about fear. And if I’ve learned anything about fear it’s that once you name it, it dissipates, a least a tiny bit.
So this winter I’m going to do what I always try to do: spend as much time as possible with family. But on those days when everything feels like it’s moving so fast and I feel that punch in the gut when I see how big my youngest is, I’m not going to guilt myself into fearing the passing years. I know growing up is a gift of enormous measure.  And I refuse to feel guilty or fearful of the very nature of growth. Even in the most still, silent moments we’re growing. All of us. And that is one of the most beautiful things we humans can know.