“Golden Ages” of Parenthood?

Among the handful of parenting columnists and mom bloggers I read, one of my favorites is Linda Sharps, who writes several times a week for The Stir and maintains her own personal blog.

I’ve been reading her posts since I became a mom myself a few years ago, and they always make me feel like I’m reading dispatches from a friend who is also in the trenches of motherhood, trying to reconcile how you can love your kids so much while simultaneously feeling frustrated by the challenges of raising them and working for a living and trying to maintain a sense of who you were before becoming a parent.

Sharps is two years ahead of me on the parenthood track – her two boys are two years older than my daughter and son – so reading about her experiences often gives me a sense of what’s to come. In one of her recent “Mom, Interrupted” posts at The Stir, she wrote about how with her boys at ages 6 and 4, she feels like she’s reached a “golden age” of parenting. Gone are the days when they were needy newborns or inarticulate toddlers. Now, it sounds like her boys have hit a sweet spot of childhood where they play together and entertain each other. “They can communicate their needs, they're out of diapers, they sleep through the night, and they can help with chores,” Sharps wrote. And an undeniable bonus to this particular golden age? Sharps and her husband are “50 percent done with having to help project-manage every butt wipe!” Who wouldn’t be counting the days until that glorious occasion rolls around?

While I don’t want my kids to grow up any faster than they already are, I have to admit that some days, I am cringing my way through this particular interval with a 4 year old and an almost 2 year old. It seems so wrong to admit that sometimes, when we are in the metaphorical weeds with them, I wish the time would eke by just a smidge faster so we could get where Sharps and her kids are today. Lately I feel like an ogre for sometimes being annoyed by managing two kids – two healthy kids who I’m blessed to have in my life and whom I love to the moon and back, of course – who are just acting their age. These days, it seems like I spend the limited time we have together before and after work and on the weekends yelling at them or herding them or rolling my eyes at their latest escapades (i.e. Isaac climbing into the dishwasher and yanking on the spinning sprayer thing, or Lucy sitting on Ike’s head on the stairs).

I know I have to work harder to find ways to appreciate them as they are right now, because I know that I’ll look back at this column some day and scold my former self for not savoring exactly who they are right now in this moment. As he often does, my husband brought me a welcome moment of clarity on the matter when I asked him to read this and tell me whether I sound like a monster. He said that while the kids may frustrating at times, “they're also always doing things that you'll treasure remembering.”