"I do it."

I was pondering holding my children, how it slows down as they grow, how they need me less and less as they move into being their own person.  It doesn't make me sad, really. I suppose one day I will wax nostalgic and miss it, but right now I feel like its welcome; it encourages me to see that they can do a little bit more on their own each day.  "I do it" is not a phrase that I hate to hear.  I like it.  It means confidence and drive. 

I want my daughter to do certain things on her own now, and encourage it, and sometimes see her resisting, like she knows once she does it on her own, that I will stop doing it for her for good.  She's an opportunist, really.  Always has been.  I remember her wanting me to feed her long after she learned to use a spoon on her own.  She'd sit there like a little bird with her mouth agape, waiting for me to pick up the spoon, and I often did, out of habit.  I still find myself doing things for her that I know she needs to work on (tying shoes for instance), sometimes out of habit, but sometimes just for the sake of convenience.  To allow my kids to do more on their own requires more patience on my part.  And more time.  Often I lack both.

But the one thing I don't rush through, that I don't insist they do alone, is bedtime.  I still snuggle and hold them until they are almost asleep.  Because I feel like the world can be pretty big and so can a dark room after a long day, so why wouldn't I offer that comfort to get them to sleep better, to chase away the dreams?  Why should they feel that they have to face the dark alone?  They are two and five.

I've had people tell me I'm "making it harder" on myself, that I'm "spoiling them", that I'm "wasting time".  None of their advice passes the Rocking Chair Test.  When I'm seventy and rocking on my porch, will I ponder my younger days and wish I'd spent less time putting my children to bed?  Wish I'd spent less time holding them?  How about the fact that bedtime is literally the largest chunk of time that I dedicate to praying with, for, and over my children?  Will I wish I'd spent less time doing THAT?

So Madi doesn't need me to rock her to sleep anymore.   She can and will get ready for bed alone and crawls in willingly.  But she still waits for me to put her brother to sleep, and quietly asks me to snuggle her when I come in to say goodnight.  So I crawl into her bed, hold her hand, and we close our eyes and tell each other about the colors we see in the darkness of our eyelids.  And I'm pretty sure that when I'm seventy two or some odd number, I will dream of those moments and smile and feel that maybe I did do some things right. 




© 2013 Sarah Fisher