As one of six children, my family was split in half—the “big kids,” and “the little kids.” We were all roughly two years apart, born within 10 years of each other (two of the big kids were twins, and I was the self-appointed triplet). The big kids stayed up later, got to wash our hands first before meals (“oldest first!”), and made colored braces seem like a desirable thrill. But the little kids got to go to sleepaway camp at age nine, while we had to wait until middle school. Some of the younger siblings were not forced to become lifeguards like the big kids were. And they all got everything they wanted: clothing, cell phones, and more clothing, while we had a strict budget. I never understood this pattern—the raising of different children with different rules, and swore that the laws I established for my first children would be strict and firm throughout all of my years of parenting, through to the last.
Except, they are so not. I have been unraveling lately. Not in the obvious, threadbare-way, but in smaller, less-noticeable ones. Things that I deemed important 10 years ago, I really don’t care about now. Gone are the days of trying to get my toddlers to eat a vegetable at any meal. Now I am just happy if any crumb of nutrition is ingested. Chips for breakfast? No problem. We just need to worry about getting the older kids out to the bus on time and simply don’t have the opportunity to sit and wait for an early-morning tantrum from the youngest. Grabbing toys from everyone else’s hands? Just let him… we need quiet so that homework can be completed. Stay up until 10 pm and roam the hallways? As long as I can get everyone else into bed on time, I can deal with him later.
I was so rigid. There was a method and meaning to everything. I sat through hours of tantrums because a child wanted a blue cup instead of the red, and “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.” Or that juice boxes were meant only for school and not for home. I sat vigilantly by my kids’ bedsides in the middle of the night when they had bad dreams, making sure they felt safe and could sleep in their own beds, and not, God forbid, mine. I would stumble back to my own bed after reassuringly hearing their deep rhythmic breathing, sometimes an hour or two later. I had patience back then. I would still have some patience, but there are my older children with more complex problems, and I have to split my focus on everyone. The screaming of a toddler kind of mutes everything else, and so I need to minimize it.
Will he be spoiled? Maybe. I am likely causing sibling rivalry, as well. “Why did Liad get to sleep in your bed last night?” my older kids decry, after spotting a foreign lump next to me in the morning, and having had to suffer through their nightmares alone in a cold, lonely bed. And I am caught red-handed.
“We can’t let him in the bed,” I instruct my husband the next night, reminding him of how strict we were with the other children. “Just walk him back to his room.” We had been experimenting with switching our youngest son from a crib to a bed, but the experiment came to an abrupt end, so that we no longer had to have a nighttime visitor, or jealous older children.
I am really trying to be mindful of these moments, to remember the mom I was in the past and to find passion in the positions I once had. And it bites at me, the fact that I have changed, that maybe the old me would think the current me is hypocritical for not fighting the same battles. For not even caring. I look guiltily at the children who were only allowed one even teaspoon of Ovaltine in their plastic cup of milk as I let my toddler shovel spoon after spoon in his own cappuccino glass, and then lick it, and I feel like I cheated them. Like I should hand them each a personal container of Hershey’s syrup and let them drink it straight up, to make up for lost years of not-so-chocolatey milk.
But, the bigger kids also had things my youngest won’t. The myriad of after-school activities that I thought were necessary but later deemed not developmentally appropriate (not to mention my lack of time for these things). The constant trips and traveling that have now become more burdensome with more people to care for. The new clothing every winter—my youngest will likely never get a new pair of snow pants for himself. They will always be black, worn by three people before him, maybe four if we passed it off to a cousin for a season. Most things, in addition to clothing, are used or tarnished by the time it comes his way; teachers are familiar, orthodontia is draining, and graduations are getting remarkably redundant, with fewer family members in attendance.
And so, even though I am feeling guilty at having changed as a mother, there is that constant thread that runs through the scope of my time as a parent; it is the same journey, the same destination, the same drivers, but sometimes I travel in a slightly different way. Different roadblocks, sometimes a shorter route, or just a more scenic one, but always on a wild, exciting trip.
My kids will not turn out the same. They were not born the same. They were raised under different sets of circumstances with different variables, as the world turns and time evolves. But I love them the same, whoever they are and whatever they may be. And I forgive my parents for not allowing me to drink soda during the week even though a younger sibling of mine did, because I know they didn’t mean to change the rules. Sometimes, it just has to happen.
Sarah Abenaim is a writer living in Teaneck. She can be reached at [email protected].
By Sarah Abenaim
