You would think that I would have learned by now that the little dude is developing and growing in noticeable increments all the time, but I am still caught off-guard by it. Every few weeks, I watch him doing something and I wonder ‘when did he get tall enough to do that?’. I’ve been here the whole time. This shouldn’t surprise me, but when he’s standing beside the dining room table and he’s now able to comfortably colour the papers on the table, I’m dumbfounded.

The other areas of his growth also keep surprising me. Today I think I’ve finally figured a part of that out. This week, I’ve been more tired than normal, and I’ve been exasperated by Max’s demands on me. The wife was run ragged the entire weekend by the non-stop boy. I realize now that he’s got more energy to spend than he did a few weeks ago, and his cognitive abilities have spiked as well. translation: he’s bored by the same old regular routine and he was looking for more challenging fare. I think today was the apex of this energy surplus (at least I hope so). He was up at 5:45Am with his very tired mom, and he had a full and busy day right up until his bedtime of 7:45PM. He also has a bit of a cough too, so this marathon day of fun and excitement is quite the accomplishment.

We finished off the day by going to dinner at Auntie Jenn’s house. It was a belated holiday gathering, moved to toady so that everyone could get together after a tumultuous December and January. Of course, this meant some deferred presents for Max, and that boy loves to get gifts, so he had a fine time. He’s actually developed an interest in being the center of attention, which is a neat change from being shy in big groups of people. He offered/forced the party goers to kiss the Toy Story Woody doll he had brought with him, and everyone obliged him. The power of a three-year old.

Anyway, back to my point (and I do have one). The tricky nature of parenting is this cycle of acclimatization and change. As adults, we love routine and dependable predictability, but our developing little people are still morphing and transforming at the drop of a hat. If you get too attached to the way things used to be, or the way you think they should be, you’ll end up butting heads with your kids and driving yourself crazy.  Go with the flow, baby.

 

That’s not an accusation, and hopefully it’s not startling news for anyone. No matter how well your child does in living a happy and harmonious life, their life cannot reach back into your past and fix your lingering bad memories. Their scholastic achievements will not erase your F in grade 10 physics, and their popularity will not retroactively get you invited to the high school parties you missed out on.

I’m not someone who looks to right the wrongs of my own past through my child’s life. But, I do sometimes notice a difference in my childhood and his, and some of them are kind of interesting.

In a broad sense, his early years are much better than mine. My mother tried to her hardest to raise my brother and I, but parenting is a two (if not multi) person job. The slow and steady deterioration of my father as his alcoholism sank its teeth deep into his heart was hard for everyone watching it happen, including me. Even in the early years, I don’t think I had much connection or interaction with him. And as the marriage steadily worsened and he began to sleep and spend all of his time in the basement, the gulf between us grew even bigger. I’m in a fairly good place about all of this now, but it does make me happy that Max will never come home on a sunny summer afternoon and find me drunk and passed out in the living room. Ah, the good ol’ days of my youth. Unfortunately, that also means Max doesn’t get to have another grandpa in his life, but there is only so much under my control.All I can do is cover that boy in smootches (and I do).

I’m pretty sure that I didn’t go to school until the first day of junior kindergarten, and I do remember being terrified by my confusion at the new experience. Max is now having a great time at his pre-school two mornings a week, and he’s socializing wonderfully and bonding with his teachers. Score another one for the little dude.

On the topic of his pre-school, I realized there’s a tangential association that will also be markedly different for him. His preschool is on the second floor of a church parish hall, and there is a faint lingering smell of incense and generally churchy odours. For me, the smell of church evokes melancholy and sadness, because being dragged to church irregularly by my mother is not a fun memory. I also went to Catholic school until grade 9, but we were anything but a religious family, so the gap between what we were supposed to believe and act like, and what we actually were like always bothered me.  But for Max, the smell of a church will be associated primarily with his school where he has fun with his friends, and that’s alright by me.

I am quite the melodramatic fellow, with a hearty dash of doom and gloom and pessimism thrown in to boot. I’m noticing this trend and I’m making some gains in nipping this kind of negativity in the bud. One way it manifests is in my perception of other families and the quality of life for the children.For the longest time, I’ve been saddened when I think of the kids who end up in the OHL, playing hockey in a city far away from home. I could only think of those boys being away from their moms and dads for months at a time, and how lonely that must be. Of course, I’m really projecting my feelings about the idea of Max being away from  me, which is a little premature since he’s only 3.

As I was watching a Knight’s game last week and babbling on about this to my buddy, I took a moment to stop and look at it from a better perspective. Instead of focusing on the distance from hometowns (and for the Russian players, the language barrier), I realized how much of a positive experience it was for the kids. They get to work on their skills and live with other hockey families as they expand their horizons and play the game they love.

And last night, I was overly emotional and sad over my very myopic view of one of Max’s friends home life. I had weaved a sad-sack narrative that I needed to spend a lot of time with him to improve his quality of life, when in actuality, his home life is fine. Just because his parents handle things in a way that I wouldn’t, it doesn’t mean that I need to swoop in a rescue the boy. His parents love him, and they’re giving him a fine upbringing without my butting in.

That isn’t to say that I don’t believe that my parenting style is better. You have to believe your parent-fu is strong, to do a good job. It’s all subjective, and there are a million ways to raise a kid, but I am very happy with the way we talk things through and work together. I like listening to Max and giving him a say in how we accomplish our goals.