They need us to give them permission to be young for just a little bit longer.Make this subreddit a better place! Vote and participate in the new section and report rule violations. When everything else around them is pushing them out of their childhoods sooner then they are ready for, they need us to be the ones to pull them back. They want us to tell them it is okay to still love Lego’s and play with dolls and watch cartoons, because the messages they are getting from almost all the other influences in their lives are telling them differently. “Could that actually have worked?”īecause as crazy as this may sound, our older (but not too old) kids today just really need our permission to be kids. He looked up and gave me a smile.Īs I walked back towards the kitchen, I found myself whispering to myself in disbelief. When I peeked my head into his room, he was sitting on his bed playing with his Lego’s. I decided to give him a little time to cool off and then go check in. “Great, the silent treatment,” I was thinking. I expected he’d at least angrily stomp off, but nothing. Instead, he sat there quietly for a few minutes and eventually got up and went to his room. I was waiting for another one of those eye rolls with a huffy response or that you are so lame and you just don’t understand me classic face seen in every teen movie since the dawn of time. I got up and I went over to him and gave him a hug and then a kiss on the head. “I’m officially giving you permission to be a child for just a little bit longer.” Stop trying to do things, and watch things and be things that you are not ready for and that you’re not even really all that excited about.” “Stop with the attitude and the eye rolling. “So, you can stop now,” I repeated to him again. I confessed that if he was a teenager and acting this way, I would give him a little more grace. I sadly admitted that we live in a world that pushes kids into growing up too fast. I told him that I realized he was probably seeing kids act like this at school or on TV. “I want you to know that it is okay to still be a kid,” I said. I softened my gaze, lowered my voice and broke the heavy quiet. We were both silent for a few heartbeats, just starting at each other. It was almost like he found himself playing a part in a school theater production, but he didn’t remember even trying out.įinally, one day when this new obnoxious version of my child sat down at our table as I was making dinner and his wannabe teen act began, I simply looked over at him sternly and said “Stop.” It lacked that particularly charming over the top teenage angsty quality. But something just felt off about all of this….Įverything he was saying and doing didn’t really seem to have much heart behind it. Being completely honest, sometimes I did. His transformation from my sweet little boy into an angry, moody adolescent was definitely something I was not expecting for a few more years.Īs I watched it all unfolding, I could have easily reacted with anger, lectures, and punishments. I wish I could tell you this was coming from my middle schooler, but we hadn’t even hit the tween years yet. Then of course there were lawyer like arguments about the total unfairness that he was the ONLY person in his class without his own iPhone, and how not letting him sit in the front seat of the car was clearly an abuse of our parental powers. Ummm so sorry, but NO to the Hunger Games. It quickly progressed into daily battles about what kind of TV shows, movies and books were appropriate for him. Next came the over dramatic sighs of indignation and then the occasional slip of inappropriate language. Do you feel like your kids are growing up too fast? I did too, and then one day….
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