What happens when your kid outgrows early childhood: a parent’s guide to letting go
I stood by the elementary school bike rack after the last day of fifth grade, holding my daughter’s frayed sparkly lunch bag, when she shifted her weight and said, “Can I carry that? Mia’s mom isn’t hanging around hugging her out here.” I handed it over without argument, and that quiet line drifted through my head: That’s the end of this era then.
The lunch bag had gone with her every day for six years. She picked it out at Target the summer before kindergarten, covered in glitter that flaked off onto every kitchen counter for the first three years. I packed her lunch in it every morning, cut the crusts off her peanut butter sandwich until she was nine, slipped silly good luck notes into the side pocket before spelling bees and field trips. When I helped her dump it out on the kitchen counter when we got home that last day, all the small stuff tumbled out: a half-eaten fruit snack she’d forgotten about from April, a sticky dinosaur eraser she won at the second grade fall fair, the crumpled note I’d written her before her first piano recital. She pushed it all around with a finger and said, “I don’t need this anymore. Can we donate it to the after-school program for the little kids?”
I nodded, and set the bag by the door. For a week after that, I caught myself feeling off, like I’d misplaced something. I’d read all the posts about how fast it goes, how you should treasure every moment, but most days when she was little I was just tired, counting down to naptime or bedtime or the weekend when my husband got home to help. I didn’t realize how much those small routines had become my routine, too, until they were gone. I caught myself almost bringing up how much I missed walking her into her classroom to kiss her goodbye, and then I stopped. I’d done that once before, when she first asked me to wait by the front door instead of coming to her cubby, and I’d joked that she didn’t want my kisses anymore. She’d gone quiet for the rest of the walk home, and I realized I’d put my hurt feelings on her, when all she was doing was growing up.
That’s the first thing I figured out, after that day: your feelings about the end of an era don’t have to be your kid’s problem. It’s not their job to comfort you because they don’t want the same things they wanted three years ago. Instead of saying “I miss my little girl” and making her reassure me, I just took that dinosaur eraser out of the bag, wiped the sticky off, and put it in the memory box in the back of my closet. After she went up to her room to text her friends about summer plans, I stood by the closet and cried for five minutes, then wiped my face and started making spaghetti for dinner. If you need to grieve the old days, that’s fine. Do it in private, text your best friend who also has preteens, write it in your journal, don’t dump it on the kid who’s just trying to figure out how to be a bigger kid.
The second thing, for parents who have younger kids after older ones: don’t make your older kid hang back so you can relive the old era. My son is in second grade now, and I still get to pack his lunch, cut his crusts, walk him into his classroom for Halloween parties. For the first couple months after my daughter graduated elementary, I kept asking her to come to my son’s class events, and she kept saying no, she wanted to go to her friend’s house. I used to get a little huffy about it, until I realized I was asking her to be someone she wasn’t anymore just to make me feel better. Now, when she says no, I just say “no problem, I’ll save you a cupcake for when you get home”. That’s it. No guilt, no big speech.
Even for teachers, this makes sense. I used to volunteer in my daughter’s third grade class, and I saw how some adults get really emotional at the end of the year, crying in front of the kids when they leave for middle school. Most fifth graders are already so awkward about showing any feeling at all, that just puts them in a weird spot. Instead, one teacher I know just writes a tiny personal note on every kid’s last assignment, mentions a silly or good moment they shared that year, and shakes their hand when they leave. She keeps all their drawings on a bulletin board in her house, not in the classroom. That works for everyone.
It’s tempting to think the end of an era means everything from before is gone, that you have to wrap it up neatly and put it away, or that you have to cling to it to keep the connection with your kid. But that’s not true. You don’t have to throw out all the old routines just because the kid is older, and you don’t have to force the old routines to fit a new stage. My daughter doesn’t want me to read to her every night anymore, but if she’s upset after a bad test or a fight with a friend, she’ll still come sit on my bed while I read my own book, and that works better than the old routine ever did.
Last week, my daughter asked me to pack her lunch for her middle school orientation. I grabbed the new plain black backpack she picked out, and I almost cut the crusts off her sandwich out of habit. Then I remembered she likes the crust now, so I left them on. I almost slipped a big sappy good luck note in the bag, too, and then I just wrote “extra chips today” on a sticky note and stuck it to the container. She didn’t mention it when she got home, but she texted me a smiley face from her lunch period that day.
The old era is over. I don’t carry her lunch bag, I don’t wait for her by the classroom door, I don’t get to hold her hand crossing the street every day. The new one is still wobbly, still new, still figuring itself out. I still have the dinosaur eraser in the memory box. It doesn’t need to be on the counter every day to matter.
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