“But I will cry later. Oh, how I’ll cry.”
There are plenty of things that we hope our kids will grow out of.
Throwing tantrums is one. Not contributing to the rent another.
But among all of these, there are also the things that we never want to our children to grow out of – or rather, the things we hope they will never tell us to stop doing.
Think tucking them in at night, kissing them goodbye, and knowing they want to tell you every single thing that’s going on in their lives.
All great things mums and dads love doing – most of which will probably be outgrown eventually.
One mum has taken to the internet to share her experience of her son outgrowing something, and how she knows she has to accept it.
Lauren Cormier recently took to her blog, Oh, Honestly! – Real Life For Real Moms, to share the story of the notes that she leaves her son when he goes off to school.
She said that she usually leaves the notes in her son’s lunchbox, but that his friends had started teasing him.
Her son said that he didn’t want her to stop leaving the notes, but Lauren said that she knows “what’s coming.”
“He told me I could continue, but I could see the struggle in his eyes; the struggle between not wanting to hurt my feelings and growing up. Up and away.
We came up with a solution to the note problem that satisfies us both for now, but I know what’s coming.
Maybe it’ll be the lunchbox notes, maybe it’ll be our bedtime cuddles, maybe it’ll be something else entirely. He’ll struggle for days between hurting my feelings and being true to what he is meant to do: Grow up and away.
Until finally, he’ll bare his heart. And I will take it well. I’ll understand.
But I will cry later. Oh, how I’ll cry.”
Lauren also told the story of her own realisation that she wanted her mum to stop kissing her when she tucked her in at night.
The blogger wrote that her mum used to tell her to “hug me like I hug you” and to”kiss me like I kiss you” before tucking her into bed, and that one day, she just decided that she didn’t want that to happen anymore.
“I battled with my decision for days. Part of me wanted to hold on. Part of me wanted to let go. None of me wanted to hurt my mom’s feelings and I knew that this would.
We’d done this for years. And then at some point I decided I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was growing up. I was growing away. But how do you tell your mom that?
She took it well. She understood. I don’t know if she cried later. I think she probably did.”
We don’t know about your mum, Lauren – but we’re definitely crying now.
