My Almost-Seven-Year-Old Asked For Coffee This Morning
It was just a regular Tuesday. I overcooked the edges of the chocolate chip pancakes, the maple syrup I bought was the wrong kind—the kind that’s mostly corn syrup and leaves a weird sticky film on your fingers, the dog dragged one of my clean socks under the fridge before we even sat down. We haven’t gotten around to fishing that sock out yet, to be honest. It’ll stay there until we move the fridge for something next year, probably. My husband was still half asleep, reading his work emails on his phone, and when he reached for his orange juice he knocked the whole carton over, so we spent five minutes mopping it up with paper towels that kept falling apart. I was pouring myself a second cup of coffee, the dark roast that’s been in the pantry for two weeks that I only drink when I stayed up too late the night before (last night it was that weird knitting documentary on Netflix, don’t judge), when Lila leaned her elbows on the counter, and said it plain: Can I have some?
She’s six right now, birthday next Saturday. For the past month, everything has been “when I’m seven I can do that.” When I’m seven I won’t have to hold your hand crossing the street. When I’m seven I can sleep with the door closed all the way. When I’m seven I don’t have to go to bed at 7:30. She’s been claiming her big kid status one tiny, very serious declaration at a time, and most days I just nod and go “sure, kid” because I know half of it is just trying on the feeling of being older.
I almost said no before I even thought about it. Automatic parent no. No, you’re too little. No caffeine for kids. But then I looked at her. She was standing on the blue step stool we got when she was two, the one that’s too small for her now but she still insists on using it because it’s hers. Her socks were mismatched— one with sparkly unicorns, one with neon T-Rexes— and she refused to change them this morning even when I pointed it out, said mismatched is a style now, mom. Her hair has that little cowlick at the front that sticks up no matter how much gel I put in it. And I thought, I remember when I was her age, begging my dad for a sip of his coffee every morning at the diner we went to on Sundays. I remember burning my tongue on it, making a face, but feeling so cool because I got to have what the grown-ups had. My parents never said no, just gave me a tiny sip in an empty soda cup with a ton of milk and sugar. It never hurt me.
So I said okay. I grabbed that tiny lumpy mug she made at the pottery studio for Mother’s Day last year, the one with the lopsided handle and blue polka dots that are all different sizes. I put one teaspoon of coffee in it, filled the rest with warm whole milk, added a splash of vanilla extract and half a spoonful of sugar, stirred it up. She held it with both hands, breathed in the steam, nodded like she was a coffee critic reviewing some fancy roaster in Brooklyn. She took a slow sip, blinked, and said it’s good. Perfect, actually.
A week ago I saw a thread on some mom group I’m in where a lady got dragged for letting her 6 year old have a sip of coffee, people saying it stunts your growth, it causes heart problems, it’s irresponsible. I felt that little twinge, you know? The parent guilt that just sits in the back of your chest all the time now, waiting for you to do something that’s not on the approved list. I checked her pulse after ten minutes, just stupidly, to see if it was racing. She was sitting at the table, smearing extra syrup on her pancake, arguing with my husband about whether dinosaurs had feathers. Her pulse was fine. She didn’t climb the curtains or scream for an hour or anything. She ate two pancakes, wiped her hands on her pants (don’t judge, I’m too tired for that on a Tuesday), went to the living room to color her unicorn coloring book, same as every other morning.
Later, when my husband texted his mom about it, because we tell her all the stupid little stuff Lila does, she texted back immediately that when he was five he snuck a full mug of her coffee off the counter, climbed the big oak tree in the backyard to the roof, and fell asleep up there for two hours. They thought he’d run away, she said, turned the whole neighborhood out looking for him, and he just woke up when they called his name, yawned, and climbed down like nothing happened. “Turned out fine,” she wrote. Which is true, he did turn out fine, even if he still drinks way too much coffee every day.
I’m not one of those parents that thinks all the rules are stupid, or that letting your kid drink coffee makes you a cool rebel mom or whatever. I buy organic apples, I limit her screen time to an hour on weekdays, I make her wear a helmet when she rides her scooter, I throw out the expired juice boxes even when she begs to keep them. I know caffeine isn’t great for little kids. I remember when I was 11 I had a large iced coffee before a middle school dance and I had a panic attack in the bathroom, thought I was dying, had to go home early. I get why people say no. It’s a reasonable rule.
But today, it just didn’t feel like that big of a deal. She didn’t want a big mug of black coffee. She wanted to have what mom and dad have. She wanted to be a big kid, for five minutes at breakfast. Half an hour after she finished, she left about half an inch of coffee milk at the bottom of the mug anyway, when I went to clear the table. I think she just wanted to say she had it. She didn’t even like it that much, it was too bitter for her, even with all the milk and sugar. She just wanted the experience.
I’ve been so stressed about her turning seven lately. It feels like such a big milestone, like after seven she’s not a little kid anymore, she’s a big kid, and then before I know it she’ll be 17 and asking for the car keys. I keep catching myself staring at her when she’s not looking, trying to remember what she felt like when she was tiny enough to hold in one arm. But this morning, holding that mug, she didn’t feel like she was growing up too fast. She just felt like her. Six years and eleven months old, socks mismatched, hair sticking up, wanting to be like the people she loves.
I don’t have a big lesson here. Tomorrow if she asks for coffee again, I’ll probably say we can have a tiny sip on Saturday, for your birthday. Or I’ll say no, because we have soccer practice and I don’t need her bouncing off the goals. Whatever. It’s just coffee. It’s just breakfast. It’s just one more little step she’s taking, and I’m just over here, mopping up spilled orange juice and trying to keep up. No big win, no big mistake. Just a Tuesday. (Word count: 1187)
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » My Almost-Seven-Year-Old Asked For Coffee This Morning