Last night, I got a glimpse of my parenting future.

Elia was out with friends, riding bikes around the neighborhood. We had worked out a plan as to where she could go and what time to be home, but it was nevertheless hard for me to send her out there with only her friends for guidance. 

In my mind, I imagined her 10 years older and instead of riding a bike, she’s driving a car and the elementary school friends are high school friends hanging out in the whole city instead of down the street.

Right now, the custom of hanging out with friends is new to both my daughter and me. I'm not sure I'm feeling entirely welcoming. OK, I know I'm not. I am not in love with the new position of importance that friends have taken in her life. I don't love that when Elia sees friends riding their bikes outside or playing at the playground across the street that there is suddenly someone more important than me. When she hears voices outside, she will fervently jump up from the couch, out of the crook of my arm, abandoning our book in mid-sentence, the words spilling out of her mouth, "Can I go play with my friends?"

Oh.

As my daughter's life begins to shift from "mom is my everything" to...well, "mom is not my everything," she has new preferences and interests. I am seeing her friends' mannerisms, quirks, voices, and word choices in Elia. Their influence is visible. This is quite a shift from up until now I only saw my influence in her.

As my daughter is still young, I know that this is only the beginning of her "age of friends" and I am well aware that over the years, friends will take more precedence in both of my children's lives. 

Gordon Neufeld's book, Hold On to Your Kids, has new meaning for me now. I read the book and loved it when my kids were infants. It is one of four books that I consider to be the cornerstones to my approach to parenting. Now, as Elia grows older, I understand that it’s healthy for my daughter to include friends in her relationships, but I find it difficult to figure out how to continue to be her anchor in her expanding social world. 

This is when parenting feels more like an effort to me. I have to find new ways of relating with Elia and setting boundaries to protect family time while respecting her time with friends and nurturing her growing self-autonomy. 

In our family meetings, we've worked out guidelines for friend time, family time, and alone time. Daily conversations have become an important means to maintaining connection with my growing child. I seek out opportunities to put my arms around her, my fingers in her hair. Most importantly, I listen. I listen to my daughter's stories with interest and without judgement.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this recent shift in dynamics, but I am confident that our family’s relationships will continue to serve as Elia’s foundation. In the meantime, I will cuddle with my child as often as I can and enjoy these last moments of her early childhood while learning to look forward to watching her grow into the person she is becoming.

What are the milestones and transition points your family has celebrated this month?

My son is 7-1/2 years old and attends a local elementary school. The evenings can be a challenge. He is exhausted, and I have work emails to finish up and dishes that need washing. We are constantly negotiating transitions while trying to get our tasks done, and we don't always have the same wants or needs at the same time. It's easy to lose connection with each other.

This is why I was so interested in picking up the book, The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting by Brene Brown. I was particularly interested in what she wrote about play. She referenced the definition of play by American researcher Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play:

1. Time spent without purpose;
2. You lose sense of self and don't feel inhibited or self-conscious;
3. You lose track of time.

Dr. Brown has his own book, Play. Another resource I enjoying on this topic is the book, Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen.

What I realized is that playing together helps me re-establish enjoyable connection with my son that otherwise gets squeezed out of my to-do list and schedule.  Play can restore us to the simple joys of spending time together.

But there's a catch. The activity selected has to feel genuinely like play to both the child and the parent. Play for my son may include endless LEGO battles. I realized that I had a different idea of play than my child.

Going back to Dr. Brown’s definition, I compared my ideas with play with his definition. First, purposeless time felt like a luxury I couldn’t have. Plus, I preferred to spend purposeful time with my child. Second, I didn’t know what it meant to lose a sense of myself playing with my son. I felt insecure and self-conscious because I didn’t know how to play LEGO battles. Third, instead of losing tract of time, I found myself counting the minutes and hoping for the end to come faster.

What do you do when play for one of you isn't fun or even miserable? Figure out what you both like to play.

In her book, Brene describes how she sat down with her family to list activities that fit the definition of play for each of them. The overlaps determined how the family spent time together on weekends and what kinds of vacations they chose.

I loved this idea so much that I did the same with my family. Both my son and I love to make up songs and rhymes, lie in the hammock and read a book together, jump at the indoor trampoline park under disco lights, and play certain board games. We also made a "limited play" list for activities that we both enjoy doing for a short time but that one of us grows tired of sooner than the other. This way, neither of us has to give up some together activities that we enjoy even if it's not the favorite of the other.

The list has become a go-to resource especially when one or both of us are needing extra connection on a hard day. We're also playing card games more often, remembering how much we both like to play in the water, and have more connecting conversations during and after playing together.  

If you’re looking for ways to play together, try the steps that helped my family find ways to spend enjoyable playtime together:

1. List enjoyable play activities for each family member.
2. As a family, look at all of the play activities on the list together.
3. As a family, identify the play activities that overlap across all of the family members’ lists.
4. Repeat this activity as a family every year. What changes? What stays the same? Do any of these activities become or remain beloved family traditions?

How does your family enjoy playful time together?

Happy founders month, Nurturings! As we celebrate 31 years of supporting parents, we are excited to share one of our audio recordings -- created at a time before podcasts were even a thing!

Back then, parents from around the world checked their time zones before dialing a phone number to join a conference call. After a prompt to click the mute button on their phones, parents could then listen in on a conversation very much like today's podcasts between host Lu Hanessian, Nurturings cofounder Lysa Parker, and a featured guest.

Click this link to step back in time with us to listen to timeless understanding and encouragement on the joys and trials of parenting: https://www.attachmentparenting.org/audio/20081006_teleseminar.mp3

The myth of perfect parenting is so pervasive that even Martha Sears, coauthor of more than 25 parenting books, was tempted to believe it! Join in on listening into this touching and intimate discussion with Martha about the challenges of motherhood and how she learned to embrace the imperfections of real-life parenting.