This could easily be a series on its own. Parenting littles in your fifties is not the same as parenting littles in your twenties or thirties. The obvious differences come with the changes we often go through as we age.
Being older, it’s harder to go without sleep. We are tired!
I say this with some restraint. A lot of that is personality and how we
are made. I naturally function better
without sleep than my husband. For most
of our parenting years, I got to be a stay-at-home mom while my husband worked
out of the house, so I always took night duty.
(It was a less happy situation when I was working full time and still
did night duty!) Even in the gap when we did not have little sleep-thieves,
there were occasions I pulled all-nighters and kept on ticking. I plowed through my BA and MS this way. I loved people who spent too many nights in an
ER or nursing home. I can sit in a chair
with the best of them.
Even so, we are tired!
On that old-body bandwagon is that we are jointy and creeky. Raising littles after back surgery looks
different from when you could throw the kids in the air without a care. I broke my feet and have plantar fasciitis. I’m not the runner I once was.
A benefit of age is that we are wiser and have
perspective. We know what will last and
what needs attention. We can laugh. This
is a huge boon. Things that seemed dire once
are merely blips that we can ride out with grace. Our vision is longer. The concept of raising adults is not new, we
have actual tangible evidence that they do grow up. The first time around, it was theory, a
hope. This time, we have more assurance.
😊
A real zinger about raising kids in your fifties is that
your kids talk about and pretend to have hot flashes way more than is normal!
No comments:
Post a Comment