Last week, Ollie my oldest son turned 5 years old. He is no longer, a baby, a toddler, or in early pre-school age. He is officially a young kid. While Ollie is excited about this I’m not quite sure that I’m ready for this.
Every developmental stage has its unique challenges, and until you work through them, they can often seem daunting and intimidating. For example, I was not looking forward to potty training Ollie. I actually delayed doing it a couple month later than I should have. However, after I got him through this stage, I realized that it wasn’t that big a deal, and that I could have handled it months earlier.
This cycle goes on and on, because that’s is the nature of parenthood. It’s not the same challenges days after day, it's different ones, that have to be handled and managed differently. Things that worked in the past often no longer work, and it can feel defeating as your child gets older, but you got to have faith, keep at it, and know that it truly is a cycle.
The thing that is difficult for me to know how to manage as Ollie becomes a kid, more than anything else is the outside world. When Ollie was a baby, his world was our family, and friends. As he got older, pieces of the world would creeped into his consciousness but only through me and Diana, and in ways that he often didn’t completely understand so they would just fly over his head.
As Ollie’s senses have developed, his awareness of the world has developed. When people say things to Ollie, he has a deeper understanding of what these words mean, when Ollie sees things, they stick with him, and his feelings are deeper and more complex than they ever have been before. When I used to listen to songs from the broadways show Hamilton, he would bounce around and maybe pick one phrase like “my shot” to sing. Now he can sing along to almost all of the words from “You’ll Be Back,” and the way that he carefully articulates “send a fully armed battalion,” has me concerned.
The expectations of how he socially interacts with the world have grown. Once upon a time, it was socially acceptable for Ollie to not say “hello,” to someone when they spoke to him, like when he was . . . y’know, one month old. Also, back when he didn’t really know how to talk, we never said “use your words,” when he got angry, because he literally didn’t have the words to express himself. Also, haring things with others and playing with his peers have also gotten more complicated.
The older Ollie gets, the more he has to face challenges by himself. The classes that he takes, no longer have the parent sitting there right by him, and during birthday parties, parents don’t hover like they did during toddler birthday parties.
All of this stuff is hard to deal with. I don’t have all the answers for Ollie, it’s difficult helping Ollie through social stuff, and even though I love that Ollie does so much by himself, part of me wishes I could always be there when he falls.
Each one of the challenges has another magical sides. The other day Ollie asked me “’immigrants, we get the job done’? What’s an immigrant?” which led to a wonderful conversations about his heritage. Childhood friendships is more complex that toddler friendships, but it’s still adorably simple. Ollie got into a conversation with another kid his age in the neighborhood, simply connecting over a Transformer toy, without pretense or hesitation, just a simple connection. Last weekend, Ollie went to a drop-off birthday dance party. When I walked in he was sitting there with a piece of cake in front of him. I noticed that he wasn’t eating because he didn’t have a fork. I was about to walk up to him, to get him a fork, but he asked another adult for one politely,
I don’t know all of the challenges that I will face with my 5 year old son, but I know who he is. We’ve been through some difficult times, but we’ve always done it together and through it all there’s been more laughter than tears and more "hugs than ughs."
Happy Birthday Ollie-Bear. Daddy loves you, I’m very proud of you, and you’ll always be daddy’s special little guy.
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