Parenting Without A License

I’m Not Ready Yet. And I’m Starting To Think That That’s Part of the Point of Being A Parent.

Posted by Kimberly on November 6th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, NaBloPoMo

One of the hardest things about being a parent is letting your children grow up. It’s not really so much an issue in those early years, when each milestone is greeted with cheers and breathless anticipation; as they get older, however, each new development takes thenm further into the world (and farther away from you) and it gets harder to step back and let them try things on their own. We don’t want to hold them back on purpose, of course. No parent wants their child to miss out or be left behind. It’s just that sometimes they’re ready for new things before we are. It’s our job to weigh what we’re ready for against what they’re ready for and come up with a happy compromise. Or, at least, a compromise.

What Diva Girl feels she’s ready for right now is “The Sleepover.” She thought she was ready for it last year, actually, but I most emphatically was not. At that point the compromise was sleepovers at our house. This year, however, Diva Girl doesn’t want to just have a sleepover, she wants to go to one.

I’m torn.

On the one hand, at someone else’s house I won’t be the one making dire threats at 3 am, kicking myself and wondering what form of temporary insanity lead me to believe that this could possibly be a good idea. After all, I’m not nearly old enough to have forgotten that sleep is hardly an integral part of the sleepover experience, but I am old enough that it is an inegral part of mine. So there are definitely some ticks in the pro column.

On the other hand, however, it’s still a sleepover. At someone else’s house. And Diva Girl is not even a particularly good sleeper at our house. Not that that’s the point, sleeping being secondary to the event and all, but I worry about that other Mom, and how she’ll like having to deal with the challenge that can be Diva Girl at bedtime. Plus, there’s the element of the unknown at play here. When Sabrina is safe at home in her bed, I can sleep easy, knowing that she’s at home. In her bed. Safe. While I’d like to say that I have complete confidence in the parents of Sabrina’s friends and her safety in her care, if we’re being completely honest, I don’t. I have no reason to be wary of the fathers and brothers of Sabrina’s friends–who uniformly seem to be a group of “good guys”–but then again, I don’t think most parents feel suspicious of the family friend who steals their child’s innocence.

None of these concerns impact Diva Girl’s desire to attend her friend’s sleepover party. Nor should they. These are parental concerns, not the worries of a little girl who just wants to do what all the other little girls are allowed to do. Which is another element in this particular equation–The social aspect. Diva Girl has not traditionally done well with large groups of girls, and I worry about the endless possibilities for bullying and girlish cruelty presented by a mob of tweens left largely to their own devices for roughly 12 hours. But while I see all the ways that this could possibly end badly, Diva Girl only sees how much fun everyone is going to have, and how awful it will be to be the one girl who misses it.

She’s got a point in that. She’s got a chance at this new school to make things different. To fit in, have a group of friends, and to be included in ways she never has been before. Nobody wants their kid to be a lemming, mindlessly jumping off of that proverbial bridge, but watching your child live on the fringes, desperate for other kids to like her, wanting to be part of the group but always ending up as the outcast and unable to figure out how to change that, is heartbreaking. This invitation is a chance for her to start to build a new identity for herself as the girl who is included in the fun, not as the one who is somehow always on the outside looking in.
So, even though I’d rather that my baby didn’t feel the need to make this particular leap right now, I have to acknowledge that that is borne out of my lack of readiness for this next step, not hers. It’s time to put away my own fears and accept her confidence in herself. I know that I’m not ready for her to grow up this way yet, but I also know that she never will be unless I let her. And since the only thing I can think of that is worse than my little girl growing up and leaving me behind is the idea that maybe she won’t, that my own ambivalence and desire to keep my baby with me will transfer to her an inability to embrace herself with confidence, I know it’s time to let go. Or at least pry the first finger off of that death grip.