“Mom, can you make my sandwich?”
The question is a valid one. She is a flurry of
activity behind me, collecting lunch items to throw into an insulated bag that has
seen better days. I am sitting at the table, reading the news, cruising Facebook,
sipping coffee. I have all morning – all day, if I choose – to do this. She has
exactly twelve minutes before she leaves to catch the bus, and fourteen minutes
of routine to go.
“No,” I reply. I resist the temptation to look
at my daughter and into the pleading. It’s hard. This request has crept into
her morning routine more often lately; as temperatures rise, my kids slumber
later, their alarms buzzing once, twice, then going silent. They have fallen
prey to the unsatisfactory – yet all too tempting – brevity of snooze button
sleeping.
I won’t make her sandwich. She needs to figure
out how to manage her time better, to get out of bed at an hour that allows her
plenty of time to fix her lunch and get herself ready for school on her own.
She doesn’t really need me; she’s using me as a crutch, a prop. Supermom could
swoop in at any time, but I don’t, for one reason only.
She can do it herself.
There are so many things about parenting that
are unexpected: the love for a helpless newborn that transcends understanding
and sanity; that homework for them often means homework for you; that worries do
fade – a fever isn’t reason for panic, a solo walk around the block doesn’t
inspire fear of injury and abduction.
And: children become capable of doing for
themselves all the things you have done for them for years.
Cleaning a room. Planning a hangout with
friends. Emailing a teacher. Making a sandwich.
I clearly remember my mother telling me to make
a hair appointment. I was fourteen or fifteen, not yet driving myself around.
My mom was out of the room at the moment I noticed my split ends and decided I needed
a trim. “MOMMMM!” I yelled through the house to get her attention. My mother,
annoyed, yelled back at me to look up the number and make my own appointment. I
was shocked. Surely that was an adult’s work, to make arrangements with
strangers over the phone. She’s my mom – isn’t she the one who’s supposed to do
this stuff for me?
In the end, through shaky voice and with sweaty
palms, I made the appointment. I was capable, after all.
Sometimes the hardest thing is not doing what comes easily. Resisting
the urge to do. Helping a person
develop their own skills and realizing talents and abilities sometimes means
that we take a step back and wait for them
to do it.
I can make a sandwich with my eyes closed, can
easily pick up the shoes and straighten the beds and pick the dirty clothes up
off the floor to add to the laundry pile. I have developed those abilities. But
it’s important for my kids to develop them, too.
Sometimes I forget that my purpose is to teach
them to do things for themselves and not that I am only here to serve them. So I pick up the shoes and throw the clothes in the wash and straighten the
comforter. And I make the sandwich.
And other times I step over the dirty clothes, stay
firm in my seat, and tell them no. Do it yourself.
And they do.
*******
