Who We are Now is Not Who We'll Always Be
One of the greatest gifts we can give our children (and ourselves) is the freedom and space to change.
When I share this story about Pan with friends, I always start with a disclaimer: I know that the pandemic has impacted families in so many different ways, and that our experience has not been that of everyone.
My job allowed me the flexibility to work from home, around my kids’ schedules, during the part of the pandemic that closed our local school campuses. My kids are older, capable of making their own snacks and tracking their Zoom links and assignments in Google classroom. Our family has always been pretty content to be at home, reading, gaming, cooking, building weird stuff in the backyard, shooting hoops off the handmade backboard my husband tacked on the side of our shed. With the exception of my husband losing work in the service industry and my own job going into overdrive to bring a traditionally low-to-no tech Waldorf school online for distance learning, we’ve fared pretty well these past 20 months.
I see this most obviously in my 12 (13 next week!) year-old son.
He was halfway through his 5th grade year in March of 2020. He’s always been engaged at school, interested in what’s going on, into the lessons and projects and field trips. But I’ve also seen him stick consistently to the edges of activity, as more of a curious observer than participant. He made one good friend by the time he got to 3rd grade; we changed schools in his 4th grade year and no one there clicked with him in the same way that buddy did.
His teachers shared that he wasn’t very vocal in class, but that didn’t surprise us. He’s had a slight speech impediment since he started talking, and would often choose silence over the chance of being misunderstood. His brother is just 14 months younger, and used to interpret for him when they met other preschool-aged kids at our neighborhood playgrounds in Williamsburg and Harlem in New York. When he started school for the first time, at a kindergarten in Spokane, WA, the other children in his class couldn’t understand what he was saying and called him “the Spanish boy.”
To be clear, his speech impediment didn’t seem to impact his self-esteem. He wasn’t particularly bothered by being on the sidelines of things. He wasn’t bored or sad or frustrated. He was just himself. He wanted to find that one good friend, to have someone to be close with at school, but he didn’t feel like he was missing out.
Our approach in working with his teachers and speech therapist had always been: he doesn’t feel anxiety about this, and we don’t want to create anxiety around this, so let’s give him the tools to correct his pronunciation and enunciation without making a big deal of it.
We did notice, though, that his pronunciation was getting in the way of reading and writing. The way that he pronounced certain words (things like “you’m” and “we’m” instead of “you’re” or “we’re,” or “la” instead of “the” — which does actually sound a bit Spanish…) didn’t match up with how they looked on the page in their correct form, which frustrated his reading comprehension and spelling skills. Obviously this is something we worked on with him, through modeling proper pronunciation, proofreading assignments, and gentle correction. He had semi-regular speech therapy at his first school, and extra reading and spelling support at the next one, but it wasn’t until school went fully online and he started having small group sessions with an educational support specialist on Zoom that things really started to shift.
It wasn’t just the educational support, though. As his school transformed their distance learning program to be fully synchronous and live on Zoom in the fall of 2020, I watched him come to life in front of the screen of his iPad.
And that is a phrase you will never hear in a Waldorf community.
But it’s true. That fall, he cut the hair he’d been growing past his shoulders for years. His handwriting tightened into script that was not only legible, but elegant. And while I prepped lunch in the kitchen, I could hear him regularly unmuting himself to engage in class. He volunteered answers to questions, contributed to group discussions, asked for more information about assignments. He told jokes and made silly comments. He connected.
His school went on Zoom in cohorts, splitting the class in half so there were smaller groups of students on the screen. The day started at 9:00 am, almost an hour later than a typical school year, which allowed for more expansive and slow mornings. He got a long break midday to eat and decompress from being on the screen.
I think all of these things added up to the change I’ve witnessed in him over the past 20 months. He’s gotten more direct attention from his teachers and an opportunity to fully be himself with his peers in a more intimate and controlled setting. Living the whole day at home created space to rest and turn inward before re-engaging with others. And we’ve been able to really intentionally provide a cocoon for him to experience the early days of puberty in, acknowledging and celebrating all of the ways his body is changing, as well as all of the incredible ways he’s growing internally.
I didn’t expect it.
Which is ridiculous, because the main lesson I’ve learned from motherhood so far is: everything changes. The minute you figure out your baby wants to be swaddled for their nap, something shifts and they won’t stay asleep for longer than 20 minutes if one arm isn’t free. Parenting is this scenario, played over and over again, with feeding, diapering, dressing, tantrums, playing, curiosities, hobbies, discipline, schooling, all of it.
But somehow, despite living this with him for twelve years, I’d assumed that who he was was how he’d always be. Socially aloof. Not academically-minded. Content with watching from the sideline.
This September, I watched him return to campus for fully in-person learning. He’s in the 7th grade. He’s got several inches on me now, and the form of an almost-man. He strides onto campus each morning, with his binder of school work tucked under his arm and a hoodie draped over his shoulder, greeting his classmates and teachers. From my spot in the drop-off line, I can hear him put on his outraged voice (so deep!) to comment on the absurdity of something (anything! it’s all absurd!). Sometimes he steps in to turn the jump rope for the 2nd graders, or throw a frisbee with the 3rd grade. He’s playing on the school’s ultimate frisbee team, and is interested in taking up basketball in the winter. He manages his homework without reminders.
Who he is now feels so far from who I knew him to be.
I had a conversation recently with another mom who was sharing her teenage son’s frustration at the limited opportunity to play competitive soccer after high school. It had become a huge part of his identity, but he knew it wasn’t going to be a part of his professional future. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. While we need space to grieve the identities we outgrow (whether we’re ready to leave them behind or not), it’s so important for us as parents (and as humans) to hold perspective about what new opportunities and identities can become available to us.
I took a lot of parental pride in believing I knew my child so thoroughly that I could anticipate who he would continue to be. I’m shifting now to holding space for possibility in the identities he will continue to become throughout his life.
I’m also trying to stay open to the ways in which my own identity might shift, should shift, with time and experience. It can be exhausting, learning and re-learning how to be in the world. But, for me, it’s the best way to be a human, fully engaged with being alive.
*This was shared with permission from Pan. 💛
Open Tab Count: 79
I, too, wanted a “bosom friend” to be my person when I was a kid.
I also struggled with connecting with other kids, especially in group experiences. I didn’t feel like I belonged, but was curious about what was going on, how the kids around me engaged with each other, how the adults acted towards each other and what their expectations of me were. I still sometimes struggle this way in social settings! Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections That Count and Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering are two books that have made a difference to me this past year, especially when it comes to emerging from the pandemic cocoon.
After almost 2 years of living in survival mode, I’ve been trying to find more ways to experience joy. My latest small sensory treat has been ordering perfume samples from L’Etat Libre d’Orange and taking notes on how they feel to wear. My notes read like: grandma; really strong grandma; too candy; sweet at first, then spicy. Amateur, but so pleasurable.
One of my favorite things about writing a blog was the conversations had (and friendships formed) in the comments section.
If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable version online here. I’m on Instagram here, and you can reach me at chelseaslaven@gmail.com.
Thank you for the good and sweet sharing ❤️
As a mom of an 8 year old this was so helpful to read