Separation Anxiety

Last year I bought alarm clocks for my children. The idea was that the clocks, set with a chirping bird alarm tone, would rouse the kids on school days, allowing me to evade the sleepy protests of, “I don’t want to get up yet. It’s too early.” That plan worked, most days. The other days I was calling upstairs to urge children from the covers, or going there myself to nudge them out of cozy beds and into school day routines.

Once upon a time... they all fit on my lap.

This fall, after a summer of lazy mornings, we left the alarm clocks idle and returned to the practice of me waking the kids, opening window shades to the weak morning light, bending down for quick kisses on slumber-drowsy heads. In the frenzied early morning rush, I breathe in the sleepy aura of my children before they fully emerge from their blanketed enclaves and feel my heart twinge a bit at how big they are becoming, how far away from the pillows their feet seem to be now.

How long will they let me do this, I wonder? Tuck them in at nighttime and wake them in the morning with a kiss? How many more years? How many more days?

My son, the tallest of my children, has grown higher than my shoulder. The littlest one is now up to my armpit. Two of my children will turn 9 years old in a couple of months, reaching that half-way point to 18, when they will likely fly the coop of home. I am becoming acutely aware that this magical time of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and easy innocent beliefs will not, actually, last forever. I find myself lately clinging for dear life to the fading smallness of my children.

They are at a point now where they are apart from me more than they’re with me. They are at school or with friends, exploring on their own or together, or simply holed up in their rooms with a good book and a hearty dose of imagination. They do not need to know, as they once did, where I am at all times. More and more, the stories they tell are accounts I am hearing for the first time, not things we have experienced together. I am thankful they still share these what-happened-today tales with me.

I remember, not so long ago, feeling a vague sense of relief as the children reached early milestones. When they first slept through the night. When they were potty trained and we, finally, no longer needed to order diapers by the case. When they figured out how to make their own toast in the morning or slap peanut butter and jelly between two slices of bread and call it lunch. When they could ski on their own, without me holding them, and ride their bikes without training wheels. When they learned to communicate in words spoken and write notes in perfectly imperfect child’s handwriting and read words from a page all on their own.

Those were all liberating – for me and for the children. That is, after all, a main objective of parenting: to encourage independence in thought and action and to help children, gradually, achieve their ownness – their own voice, own path, own happiness. Even as my heart aches at how much and how quickly my children are growing, it fills, too, as they continue to discover and embrace their own personas, always reaching toward the next milestone.

The truth is that at some point my children’s paths and their happiness will be far less wrapped up in mine. Someday, if I do this right (and probably even if I don’t), my children will go out into the world without me. They will, essentially, no longer need me. But for now, they still do, even if it is not as complete a need as it used to be.

We have progressed through many changes, including bedtime routines. First there was rocking to sleep with the nighttime feeding. Then reading bedtime stories with three children nestled, somehow, together on my lap. For a while the children wanted lullabies and happy things to think about and exactly five Mama kisses before they drifted off to sleep. The littlest one still requires a spider check before she is tucked in, to ensure there are no creepy-crawlies lurking in the corners of her bedroom, and she often requests extra hugs and kisses and invents reasons to prolong the tucking-in process.

Most evenings, we all still read together, although the children sit around me now; they are too big to occupy my lap anymore. Then off they go to their own rooms and their own books to read. The older two are often so engrossed in whatever they’re reading that they are reluctant to pause for a bedtime hug. But I sneak in there anyway, maneuvering between child and book, pilfering all the hugs I can, for as long as they’ll let me do it. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 13, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Dancing to joy

For the first several weeks of dance class last fall, Ella entered the studio tearfully. The first day, as she sat against the wall watching the other children leap and twirl, she turned to me and said, a bit desperately, “Mama, I want to do that.” But she wouldn’t – couldn’t – move from the edge to the center of the room. This weekly ritual was painful for both of us, and more than once I was on the verge of pulling her from dance class, waiting another year, or forgetting it altogether.

   

When she was a toddler, she was fearless. She would climb the stairs, jump off the couch, laugh at anyone, tackle her twin brother, play with worms, splash in puddles with unending exuberance. She took to skiing without a backward glance as she careened downhill. She pedaled her tricycle – then a bike – with happy abandon. Then she went to preschool, and my oldest daughter realized there is a whole, big world out there.

Even in a safe place, surrounded by a dozen other children her size, she stuck close to her brother or her teachers. At home she was silly and strong and independent. But at school, she was reserved and quiet – attentive and engaged, but still shy. As her brother expanded his social horizons, running further and playing more with the other children, she still clung to me each morning at drop off.

This year I have watched her, a kindergartener now, branch out to new friends and new experiences. She has learned to spell bigger words and read on her own, add numbers and measure dinosaurs. She maneuvers through other students on the playground at recess. She took weekend ski lessons all winter, with her brother there by her side, and played soccer and t-ball. And she started dance lessons.

From Wednesday through Tuesday, Ella chatted happily about dance class and the moves she was learning and the other kids there. Each Tuesday afternoon, though, the anxiety returned as we arrived at the studio. Ella wanted to dance. I wanted to instill the importance of finishing what you’ve started and the value in overcoming anxiety to get to the fun of something that is initially scary, but ultimately rewarding.

Ella’s dance teacher, Miss Kathy, who is ingenious in ways beyond dance instruction, created a Bravery Chart to help ease the initial angst of class. For completing tasks like walking into class by herself, sitting with the other dancers during attendance, and remembering to have fun, she received a sticker each week. Although still a bit nervous at the start of each lesson, Ella was soon smiling through dance class with the other children and showing off new moves at home.

We all have our fears to face, whether we’re 3 years old or many decades beyond – starting a new job or leaving a comfortable but unfulfilling one, walking through the doors of a new school, training for a marathon or a 5K, moving away from home, ending a relationship or diving into a new one, writing a book, meeting new people, fighting or accepting an illness. Sometimes we have no choice but to confront a challenge. Sometimes we choose to simply take the easy, comfortable way. Often, though, if we make the decision to face what makes us fearful or anxious or just uncomfortable, the rewards are big: personal happiness, professional satisfaction, new friends.

For my daughter, sticking with dance class was a challenge. Would she have been OK if we had decided to wait for another year? Sure. But we both knew she wanted to do it, and I think we would have regretted that decision, even if it had meant less hectic Tuesday afternoons.

Last weekend was the recital. It’s a big deal, with some three dozen groups performing and hundreds of people from throughout our area turning out to watch two shows. Ella was excited, but also nervous – not with stage fright, but with her usual separation anxiety. When I left her backstage before each show, she was clingy and a bit tearful.

But when the curtain came up, there was her smile and her six-year-old shimmy. Not a hint of the fear or anxiety she’d exhibited months ago or a few minutes earlier. Just pure, dancing joy – proof that sometimes doing the thing that is hard is also the most fun.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul and published on her Blog: Writings from a full life.