Do parents grow?

Do parents grow?

I believe they do.

When you give birth, in a way, you are also born, once again, as a parent. As a first-time parent you undergo what is akin to a "crise de conscience", not knowing what to do with the brand new gift of a miniature human being. You closely scrutinise 'it', then put distance between you and 'it' and try to decide whether to touch 'it', and if so, how...

Rebirth

Slowly you come to terms with your new reality, new identity, that of a parent. The growing, I think, begins at that precise moment. All over again you learn to walk, to talk, to touch, feel and see the old world in a brand new avatar.

As your child grows, so do you, on the way discovering in a new light and marveling at everything old . You learn all over again to read and write, to play ball and fight and cry and throw tantrums...Once more you struggle with homework and have bruised knees. All over again you go through bouts of cough and cold and flu.

As mother to a toddler, I remember finding myself able to relate to other toddlers, and feeling their sudden joys and unreasonable griefs. However, as my child grew out of toddler-hood, I lost that ability. Apparently, as my child grew, so did I. If I now offer advice to parents of toddlers, I can feel the remoteness of the experiences that I conversationally might share with them. Now, as mother to a teenager, I can clearly empathize with the average teenager's disregard for anything related to 'establishment', vicariously feel the flutter of receiving attention from the opposite gender, participate in gleeful exchange of secrets and gossip!

In all this, the one thought that is recurring is this: it is this bio-psychological satisfaction of having a second chance at reliving life's moments is what experiencing parenting is all about. This is it, and, this is all. As parents, our journey is our reward! This pre-empts or ideally should pre-empt (for the perceiving parent, at least) any ulterior expectation from the child. As Kahlil Gibran reminds us, our children come through us but not from us...

So, the next time your kid's birthday comes up, also secretly celebrate your own birthday as 'parent'.