Are my kids ready for responsibility?
When is the right time to give your kids more responsibility? As an adult I have multiple, competing responsibilities that I juggle simultaneously. So when and how do we ask the same thing of our kids?
It’s been a year of change for me. Returning to work and that familiar early morning panic has been a challenge. I still have stress dreams about sleeping through my alarm, three months into the school year. It’s the curse of every night owl who has to pretend to be an insufferably cheery “morning person.”
Still, if all I had to worry about was myself, I could handle it. But change is breathing down the neck of my kids too.
My kids are growing up. Mustafa is in Grade 7, staring down the barrel of teenager-dom. He grows out of shoes daily. I can’t keep up with his long legs and demands for track pants. He has piles of homework every night. My laid-back kid has suddenly developed a work ethic. I barely recognize him anymore.
Ibrahim has become quieter, dreamier. He complains less, and reads more. He joined a school sports team and gets up for early morning practices on his own. He is still a master of the art of the guilt trip, but lately he’s been using his powers for good, not magpie-materialism.
He laughs more, at things that are actually funny. He has even started laughing at himself.
But they’re still kids. They argue over junk food and morning cereal selection. They watch cartoons after school and argue over toys. Mustafa will randomly poke Ibrahim as he walks by, and Ibrahim will sit on his brother for no apparent reason.
Yet things are changing. And since change begets change, my husband and I are left tackling bigger questions. We’re leaving little-kid problems behind and entering the land of middle-school parenting.
Instead of “who’s going to watch the kids after school,” now it’s “when are they old enough to stay home by themselves?”
Other questions: When are they old enough to walk to school? To be given the house key? A debit card? A real cellphone? Am I OK with them not being under the supervision of another adult for 30 minutes or longer?
These questions make me nervous. Instead of answering them, I look at pictures of my sons as babies and toddlers. Back then I got to choose what they wore and who they spent time with and what they ate and what they watched on screens. Sure, I was an exhausted, crabby sleep zombie, but at least I had control.
I know this is ridiculous. When I was a kid in the late ’80s and ’90s, most of my classmates walked home from school every day, and stayed home alone until their parents returned from work in the evenings. They fixed themselves snacks or played outside until dark. Nobody arranged “play dates,” and latchkey kids were never a reason to call child services.
Things have changed, maybe for the better. But there will come a point in every parent’s life when we have to decide: Are they old enough to accept more responsibility? What we’re really asking is: Do we trust them?
Independence doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a gradual process that happens in spurts and starts. My kids have started to take their first steps on this path. They walk home from school; Mustafa delivers weekly flyers; they have chores at home. My job now is to hover less, to stand back and watch them stumble and learn.
Last weekend I sat at the kitchen table, reading the Saturday Star and thinking about the world, while my husband taught Mustafa to make breakfast crepes with orange butter sauce, with a side of science. “What happens when you add sugar to the water? It will get thicker, because you are adding a solid to a liquid.”
He wants to teach them to code. “Let’s start by learning how to get the computer to type ‘Hello World,’ ” he tells them. “That’s what everyone starts with.”
I couldn’t agree more. Hello, World. We are happy to be here, eating crepes with orange sauce, and trying to figure it all out. Uzma Jalaluddin is a high school teacher in the York Region. She writes about parenting and other life adventures. Reach her at ujalaluddin@outlook.com