I don’t know if I will ever understand the perspective of parenthood.  I was listening to an aircheck of WCFL Chicago, from October 30, 1975, this morning.  If you are unfamiliar with what an aircheck is, it is a tape recording of a radio station from the past. Some of us in past decades loved our favorite radio stations or maybe wanted to be radio disk jockeys.  It was not uncommon to record hours of broadcasts from these stations.  

Decades later, any of these tapes that are still around, and there are thousands of them, made their way onto the internet for others to enjoy. There is nothing else in the world that comes as close to a time machine as these recordings. Back then radio stations were the social media of the day.  They were alive with the local personality of the community.  The grocery store advertisements and car commercials are such a joy to listen to, although their contrast to contemporary reality can be hard to digest.

Alice Cooper’s Eighteen was playing. It was a sharp reminder that in just 2 days, my youngest is turning 18.  Although in many ways I feel that Noah has been over 18 in maturity for years, this is still hard for me. A proverbial slap of how fast everything has happened.

I remember Liam first coming home almost 21 years ago now and feeling that I would get to savor that stage of his life for so much longer than I did.  Ten seconds later he was 3 months, then 2 years. After that, it was a complete blur.

You would think that two and a half years later I would be wiser.  No amount of attention and appreciation can stop the runaway train of time. As we are just trying to keep everything upright and moving forward, our children grow at a rate that is difficult to comprehend.

I was recently talking with a friend who told me over the years he has hired people his children’s ages and expected them to fulfill the tasks that he assigned to them and was confident that they could carry them out. There was no doubt that they were up to the task.

He then told me that his children at the same ages were just as capable, however inside he felt the need to oversteer them, frequently asking questions if they remembered that they needed to consider something or did they did this or that. As he said this, I realized that I could completely relate to this.

It is an anomaly.  I think my children are incredible, but why do I feel the need to steer them.  They constantly demonstrate that they are well-equipped to do this on their own.  I have to internally silence myself so often that I wonder sometimes what is the matter with me!

Mel Robbins once said that if others could hear how we talk to ourselves in our heads, we would be institutionalized.  This does have a ring of truth to it, doesn’t it?  Thinking about this alleged lack of confidence that our offspring will do the right thing or remember all of the needed details, I have to conclude that it is not them that we as parents are questioning, but ourselves.  This is a self-assessment of our parenting abilities.  I don’t think that we think we are bad parents, we are simply reeling from how fast it went by and how we wanted to do so much more.

I have learned more from all of my children in the last year than I have in all of my lifetime and I have determined that it is time to give them credit because their ability to interpret and learn is magnificent.  It is not about me.  I will say, that I do need to cut myself some slack.  Maybe we all need to just take a moment to admire what our children find in us and what they choose to do with it.