The Phases of Parenting

From birth to adult, each benchmark brings challenges, obstacles and opportunities

Several times a week, I see a couple on our street walking to and from childcare with their twin toddlers. The parents seem to have a divide and conquer strategy with the adorable little girls, one of whom usually has to be coaxed to keep moving while the more independent sibling often has to be chased after.

Occasionally, we’ll make small talk, although usually it’s just a quick hello and nod of acknowledgment. When we first met, just after the girls turned 1, I mentioned that Jill and I had three kids in a calendar year.

“So you do survive, right?” one parent said with a smile and half laugh that also had that slight hint of desperation and exhaustion.

“It’s just a phase,” I replied, silently thanking God for hindsight.

Generally speaking*, parenting can be broken down into phases. First up is the “lift, tuck, and separate” phase of diapers, bottles, and the rest of the assembly line tasks new moms and dads of multiples face. Physically, you’re exhausted. Mentally, you wonder if your capacity for complex decision making will ever return. For the first three years or so, daily life often feels like a series of inputs, outputs, and benchmarks, with giggles and tears — all parties involved — in between.

With occasional hiccups and surprises, kindergarten and the elementary school years also follow a familiar pattern. (You learn, for example, that “project” actually is a four-letter word.) Parents and children go through this wonderful evolution from discovery (everything has “first” attached to it) to exploration (sports, hobbies, extracurricular activities). Eventually, you hope, they’ll find a match between their interests and developing abilities.

Our kids found things they loved reasonably early and, fortunately, we had the means and opportunities to help them pursue their passions. Of course, that meant we evolved early into the A-1 Taxi Service phase, a virtual ballet of pickup and drop off that requires “Swan Lake”-style precision and the cooperation of the traffic gods on an almost-daily basis.

As our twins entered sixth grade, Ben moved to New York and we added the “Planes, Buses, Trains, and Automobiles” value pack to parenting. Meanwhile, the other kids rapidly entered the “all you can eat activity buffet,” in which life became a revolving checklist of “do you have this?” and “did you get that?” between pickups and drop offs.

During the teen years, they moved into that familiar, restless place where they wished life would just hurry up. They wanted to drive. They wanted to spread their wings. They wanted economic freedom. They wanted to disagree with you on almost everything and yet demand your unconditional support.

Time and again, I found myself telling them some variation of, “You spend the first 25 years of your life hoping it will speed up, and the rest wishing it would slow down. Enjoy where you are now and make progress toward tomorrow.”

Now they’re actively learning what I meant by that statement.

Some time ago, I dubbed the 20s as the “apology tour,” the realization young adults have that their parents aren’t as stupid as they thought when they were teens. I apologized to my parents more in my 20s than I ever thought I would, although still probably not enough for my mom. (Just kidding, Olivia.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about these phases recently as we mosey through birthday month. This past weekend, my son Nicholas and his wife, Connor, went to New York to celebrate our twins’ 24th birthday on Dec. 11. Because we lived in different states, Nick, who turned 29 on Dec. 9, had not been with Ben and Emma on their birthday since they were 3. (Kate turns 25 on Dec. 27.)

Jill and I did not go up for the festivities, even though we missed them all terribly, and even more when we saw the photos they texted us that evening. We knew they needed that time as adult siblings, even though it made my heart happy — a Jill phrase — when they said they wished we could have been there.

Looking at those photos, I realized we are firmly in another phase in this ongoing parenting journey. As you move from one to the next, it doesn’t really become harder or easier, just different. Each phase brings new challenges, new obstacles, and new opportunities.

Sounds a lot like the rest of our lives, doesn’t it?

(* “Generally speaking” is a cover for “Subject to change without notice.”)

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Quotable

Some writers collect lines. I collect quotes, both the sweet and the sour. Here are a few memorable ones added to the files recently:

• Demaryius Thomas, the Denver Broncos wide receiver who tragically died of a seizure last week: “As men, as athletes especially, we don’t like to talk about love. We talk about brotherhood and all that, but not love. But it’s the most important thing in a child’s life. More important than the kind of school you go to, or what neighborhood you live in, or even if you grow up around drugs and violence. If you are loved, you’ll make it out.”

• Michael J. Fox, in AARP: The Magazine, on pulling out of depression: “I started to notice things I was grateful for and the way other people would respond to difficulty with gratitude. I concluded that gratitude makes optimism sustainable. And if you don’t think you have anything to be grateful for, keep looking. Because you don’t just receive optimism. You can’t wait for things to be great and then be grateful for that. You’ve got to behave in a way that promotes that.”

• Musician Nick Cave, from a Substack blog called The New Fatherhood: "There seems to me to be three levels of friendship. First there is the friend who you go out and eat with, or get pissed with, who you go with to the cinema or a gig — you know, have a shared experience with.

“The second kind of friend is one who you can ask a favor of, who will look after you in a jam, will lend you money, or drive you to the hospital in the middle of the night, someone who has your back — that kind of friend.

“The third level of friendship is one where your friend brings out the best in you, who amplifies the righteous aspects of your nature, who loves you enough to be honest with you, who challenges you, and who makes you a better person.

“None of these levels are mutually exclusive and sometimes you find someone who fulfils all of these categories. If you find a friend like that, hang on to him or her. They are rare."

• John Steinbeck, on Woody Guthrie turning The Grapes of Wrath into the story song “Tom Joad”: “That son of a bitch. He put down in 17 verses what it took me two years to write.”

• And finally, one of my favorites, from Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens in the classic TV series “Justified”: "Wonderful things can happen when you sow seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes..."

Hope you all have a great week.