Parental Growing Pains

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When you have children, so many people (mainly of the sweet-looking and elderly variety) feel the need to stop you in your path and say, ‘Enjoy it while it lasts; they’ll be all grown up before you know it!’ And this is usually accompanied with a been-there-done-that sympathy smile whilst said granny watches me have a ‘Put it back, now!’ tussle with my ‘You’re a meanie Mummy!’ red-faced son who is clutching onto a pot of Nutella with menacing force.

In the past I have just brushed this advice off and not given it much thought, but recently it has become clear how right those people are.

Because, come Monday, my youngest will be doing full days at school after his initial settling-in period. Come Monday, I’ll no longer sit in a cafe with him mid-morning, watching his eyes light up as his hot chocolate and piled-high marshmallows arrive. Come Monday, we’ll no longer go for midday bike rides around the park – with me running full pelt behind him in a trail of dust. Yes, we’ll have the holidays, but this is the end to term-time days spent hanging out together on our own. Come Monday, my ‘little’ one will be a lot more grown up.

I really thought that I’d be whooping all the way to the school gates once both my boys had started. I imagined that having that time between 9 and 3 to sort myself out – my career, the house, life in general – would make me dizzy with delight. But instead it’s given me a wet-fish slap in the face by highlighting the fact that my boys are growing up in the blink of an eye; something that is both super-exciting (for them) and super-sad (for me).

I even got a lump in my throat when marking ‘First day at school’ on the family height chart; my littlest looked gigantic compared to all the other milestone measurements. And I’ve begun to stare in awe at my eldest because I want to soak up his gorgeous face in my mind – his long eyelashes, his tiny, freckle-covered nose, his gem-stone-smooth skin. I want to remember those things before he gets stubble and before I spend less time with him because he’d rather go out with friends than snuggle up in bed with Mum reading ‘Minerals and Rocks’.

Seeing photos of children on social media entitled ‘Precious moments’ or ‘Growing up too fast’ used to make me cringe, but now I admit that I totally get it. Our little ones grow. We too grow old. The clock doesn’t stop just because you want it to. Time really is like gold dust.

So I need to stop wasting this precious time fretting about my boys growing up and instead soak up every minute – and every single freckle.

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Fiona Pennell lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and their two boys, Jack, 6, and Otto, 4. A former YOU magazine sub-editor, Fiona now spends her days being trampled on, going on slug hunts and dreaming of lie-ins. (Twitter: @fiona_pennell)

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