“Life’s gonna suck when you grow up,
It sucks pretty bad right now.”
I am rarely without a positive and cheerful answer when Max asks ‘why’, but he found one that I just can’t spin, because I don’t like it either. The specific question is “Why can’t you and mom come to school with me?”
Think about it – if you had a choice, wouldn’t you want to do everything with your best friends? I know being independent is one of the skills I have to teach him, but that means I’m teaching him to be without me, and I am going to miss him. The deeper I get into the explanation of how he will progress from two mornings at pre-school to full days at kindergarten and on and on, the more I feel separation sadness. I guess that a part of me would kind of like to keep him at my side indefinitely. It would make dating awkward for him, sure, but we could cross that bridge when we come to it.
Okay, that plan is untenable. And besides, there are a lot of great things both of us will accomplish on our own, experiences we can have and then bring back to the family to share. I want him to feel comfortable on his own, to be a guy who enjoys his own company but likes meeting new people and seeing new things too. I want his world to be wide open and full of wonder, and that means he needs to learn to be confident when I’m not there. It still breaks my heart to leave him at pre-school and hear him start to bawl his eyes out a couple of minutes later when he misses me, but that will pass. He knows I will always come back for him, and he knows that both his mother and I will cover him in smootches as soon as we see him. If anything, I have to rein in my urge to shower him with sweet treats and toys every time he goes to school. Well, maybe just one more timbit would be alright.
Chris Loblaw, Author 