'It felt like we had traded places: I was now the helpless child and she was the adult.' I wasn’t prepared for the first time I switched roles with my kid
There’s one developmental stage that’s not covered in any parenting book. There’s no book,: the first time parent and child change roles. It might be the first time a son takes a parent out for a meal or when a daughter insists on driving because she’s better at it. It can happen anywhere—the adult-child’s neighbourhood, the grocery store, a different city.
When she’d turned eighteen, I thought of her as a “starter adult”—not technically a full-fledged adult but definitely no longer a child. That year, she pierced her nose and got a small tattoo without parental permission. At, she was independent, figuring out how to get to the airport and around on her own. I felt both relief and tiny pangs of longing for parenting past when I offered advice for assorted teenage and preteen dilemmas, advice that might not get taken, but I provided nonetheless.
Parents of young children are the sun and moon, an all-knowing omnipresence. When Lizzie was little, I knew everything about her life: how she adored bananas and how her face would crumple when faced with Swiss chard. I knew exactly when she’d start to wiggleand how she liked her peanut butter sandwiches cut into triangles instead of squares. Then, in preschool, I got hints of what was to come. At the playground, a child I didn’t know would say, “Hi Lizzie.
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