A Week at a Time

“They grow up so fast.”
“You better enjoy them while you can.”
“They will be gone before you know it.”

That’s what old parents like me say to young parents.
I’m not really sure why.
It’s probably because that’s what someone said to us when our kids were young.
So we feel like we are responsible to pass it along.

One day I am fully expecting a young mom or dad to respond with. . .
“Actually I wish they would grow up a little faster.”
or “No. I haven’t enjoyed them at all today.”
or “That’s sad. Why can’t they go somewhere now?”

Okay, so maybe no parent would dare say that out loud.
But what is a parent supposed to
feel
do
say
when someone makes them feel like time is running out with their kids?

Admit it. Don’t you sometimes feel like it’s just another way of saying. . .

“You better get your act together as a parent because you’re running out of time. The future of your children is coming like a freight train, and if you’re not careful you will miss out on what’s important and mess them up for the rest of their life.”

Maybe the next time an older parent says something like that to you, you should drop to your knees, grab them around the leg and burst into tears. Then ask them, “Oh no, how did you know that? Please tell me what am I supposed to do?”

Okay, that may be a little too dramatic. But the point is time is moving faster than many of us realize. Somewhere there is a clock counting down the number of weeks you have left with your kids before they move on. If you stop to think about it, a lot can happen in a single week!

Here’s a list of possible milestones for a child growing up today:

Considering the potential of what can happen in a week, let’s spend this next week thinking about how to simplify the daunting task of 936 weeks of parenting our kids through childhood. What if we started thinking about how to parent just one week at a time?