It’s good to feel needed as human beings. We need to feel needed, at least some of the time. It’s how we recognize our value in our specific worlds.
Kids need parents for practically everything—at least for a while. They need us for crossing the street, even though they’re nine and have done it a thousand times before (they probably just got lucky there were no cars coming all those other times). They need us to tie their shoes, or, if they’re not feeling lazy today, to at least stand there and watch them do it on their own. They need us to watch when they’re flipping over the side of the couch in what looks like a professionally-trained gymnast move, because if no one sees them, did they really just do it?
When kids start growing up and doing things for themselves, it can feel a little disorienting to suddenly have so much more time on your hands in the mornings. You no longer have to make their breakfast because they popped a slice of toast in the toaster oven and spread half the stick of butter on it when it was done. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel a little sad that they’re not whining about how you’re not pouring their glass of milk fast enough because they just did it for themselves. You might even feel a little sad when they don’t forget their lunch as they’re walking out the door to school because they’ve finally learned the routine, after four years of practicing.
It sounds crazy to think that kids’ independence would cause a parent sadness. Isn’t independence what we crave when our three-year-old follows us around the house scream-crying for the toy his brother took away or our five-year-old bursts into the bathroom because he didn’t “want us to be scared while we were going pee?”
Well, it happens. Trust me. Now that my nine-year-old takes a shower in the morning and I don’t have to check behind his ears to make sure he actually used soap, I feel a little sad that I have three extra seconds on my hands.
But if you ever start feeling too sad about your kids’ emerging independence, all you have to do is get on the phone. This will provide the perfect opportunity for them to engage in a heated argument about the red LEGO piece one of them took from another—because none of the other five billion red LEGO pieces in their collection will work—and, even though you’ve taught them effective methods of conflict resolution, they won’t be able to resolve this argument with anything but a good old-fashioned fist fight. And the person who will most likely be on the other end of the line is a receptionist for your kids’ pediatrician’s office, who will politely try to ignore what’s going on in the background even while you’re asking her to please repeat the confirmation for that appointment, for the fourth time.
You could also press play on an audiobook or a podcast you’ve been meaning to listen to or (bless you) sit down to actually read a book while your boys are outside, entertaining themselves with sidewalk chalk. You can be sure that as soon as your finger hits the play button or your backside hits a chair, one of your children will come screaming into the house because he tried to smash the blue stick of chalk under a giant rock and he accidentally missed and smashed his toe instead and now it’s probably going to fall off and he actually wishes it would, because he can feel his heartbeat in his pinkie toe.
Well. At least you read a whole sentence this time.
You could sit down on the toilet. That’s when your kids will need you to get something down from a cabinet they can’t reach—like a cup, which they’ll use, as soon as you disappear back into the bathroom, to fill with water, submerge twelve LEGO pieces and the house keys (without mentioning this to you), and stick in the freezer just to “see what happens.”
Or you could sit down to eat at the same time everybody else in your family sits down to eat. What a luxury, right? You no longer have to eat cold dinners. Unfortunately, this is probably the time when your kid, who’s been drinking out of a regular cup for three years now, will accidentally knock over a brimming-with-milk Iron Man cup, because he was trying to reach across the table for more spaghetti before he’s even inhaled his first helping. And you’ll have to do what you’ve always done. Hand him the paper towels, watch him mop it up (not much more skillfully than when he was three), and then mop up behind his mopping, because perfection is the name of your game.
Or maybe just start talking to your partner, assuming that, because the kids are capable of caring for themselves now, they won’t need you and you can actually finish a whole conversation in one sitting. But this is when they’ll remember that they forgot to tell you an entire minute-by-minute narrative of how their day went, and even though they’ll politely wait for you to finish before they’ll start their story, they’ll also stare at you the whole time they’re waiting, and you can actually feel that wide-eyed gaze burning holes in your head, stealing your thoughts. You’ll look at your partner, shrug, and listen to the random observations of a six-year-old before trying to remember what it was you needed to say to the other adult in the room (it will take you three days to remember).
Or you could try to go to sleep. And then they’ll knock on your door with such urgency that you think this must surely be an emergency, and you’ll fly out of bed, fling the door open, and see before you no one who is bleeding, passed out, or dying, or any kind of fire anywhere to be found—all emergencies as defined by your Family Playbook. No, sorry, baby, your stuffed animal losing a back leg because you and your brothers were playing tug-of-war with him is not an emergency. Go back to bed.
Get used to your kids doing anything on their own, and actually start missing the times when you were needed, and almost without fail, they will make sure you feel needed again. Think I’m kidding? Start missing changing your baby’s diaper. Someone in your house will wet their pants in no time.
It’s no easy thing to pass from the I-need-you-all-the-time stage to the I-need-you-sometimes stage and then, inevitably, to the I-don’t-need-you-at-all-anymore stage. It’s also hard not to wish for an easier stage when you seem to be stuck in the I-need-you-all-the-time stage. I’ve been stranded there for almost ten years. I’d like to sit down for five minutes, please.
Also, stop growing up so fast, kids.
Just five minutes where you don’t need me? Five seconds?
But here, let me do that for you, baby.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by Helen Montoya Henrichs.)
