Over the weekend I was alone with the two youngest kids for a day, and towards the end of it I was walking upstairs feeling weirdly physically worn out by the torrent of small voices. I was thinking back to 2001 or so, when I spent most of my days alone with two small children. I remember how much I craved the quiet at night. I remember those days as hard work.
Despite my post from Monday night, it still bugs me when people say "Little children, little problems." Do you know why I'd pick toilet training over driver's ed? One reason is that no one ever died of wearing diapers for longer than grandpa thought he ought to, of course. The less obvious reason is that I know that I can get a child out of diapers now. I'm not especially efficient, and I don't exactly love it, but I can get the job done.
Driver's ed, on the other hand, is stirring up my generally latent impostor feelings. (My maternal impostor feelings are usually pretty quiet, that is. My professional impostor feelings plague me all the stupid time.) This is the part where I say, "Excuse me, God, did you mean to put me in charge of these children?"
The question of toddlers vs. teenagers came up on one of my email lists perhaps a year ago. The mothers on the list were almost unanimous that they thought teenagers were harder to deal with. We didn't know how good we had it when they were small, they said. My friend Katy chimed in to point out, wisely, how much we have forgotten about those days. It's easy to remember those slobbery kisses fondly when you have a teenager who rolls his eyes so often that you wonder if he somehow severed an eye tendon (perhaps at a Boy Scout campout? and they just didn't tell you?) and that's why those eyes have begun wobbling in their sockets with such alarming frequency. It's easy to forget the moments when you just.could.not.deal with any more of anybody else's body fluids, even if they accompanied a kiss, even if you hated yourself in the moment for getting bent out of shape about a show of affection.
I have turned into a person who is pretty calm about getting vomited on, or pooped on, or drooled on. It wasn't an easy transformation, but I don't really remember the hard parts these days. Now I need to become a person who is pretty calm about those bigger risks kids take as they move into a bigger world. I need to become a person who decides serenely whether a tone of voice is something worth taking on or something to let go graciously. I need to lose the inner drama and hurt feelings, just as I lost the freakout reaction to someone else's excretions in my personal space and on my personal clothing.
Just today I ran across a link to an old LMLD post full of advice that applies to my teenagers as well as my 3yo. To the mothers of little ones who read this blog, I am not thinking of your troubles with condescension. If someone in your life is saying "Little children, little problems" in a smug voice when you talk about your difficulties, I am totally available to ambush her with a Super Soaker for you. Let's pray for each other, so that we can all do our jobs with competence and with joy.
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