How to Parent a 6-Year-Old Boy

I'm just kidding. I have no idea. I'm just doing the best I can with the resources I have available to me. I borrow from other parents, from MY parents, teachers, coworkers - whoever I can!

This is an interesting age of independence. I used to keep Isaac at arm's reach, then I broadened his horizons by gating off the living room and letting him crawl, pull up and eventually walk, around. We always had an eye on him, though. I remember what a big deal it was when we could let him play in his room by himself. Every stage of development gave us, as parents, a little more freedom, as well.

Now that he is six and is obeying the rules (stay close to the house, don't go inside anyone's house, don't talk to anyone you don't know, don't go into the street, etc.) we can let Isaac go outside and play without one of us being outside with him. This is major. Yesterday, Isaac played outside for FIVE hours. From after breakfast until 4:00pm, he was outside...PLAYING. No video games, no movies, no sitting on his tush. PLAYING. He would come home every 10 or 15 minutes and check in or one of us would check on him. He plays with the little boy next door on one side - Austin, and the little girl on the other side - Trinity. If we weren't out there, Austin's dad or Trinity's dad (or uncle, or grandma) were out there. We could always see them and/or hear them, but it is so weird that he can just run out the front door and go PLAY - "alone."

Our weekends were once consumed with family stuff: errands, activities for Isaac, keeping him entertained and busy and now he can entertain himself. They play Ironman and Spiderman, they ride scooters and bikes and skin knees and get bug bites; they pretend and role play. They are socializing and negotiating and learning a lot of important life skills while they are outside, getting sweaty and grubby and being kids.

What did I do? Hm. Some laundry, some reading, some meal prep, I spent way too much time on Facebook playing Frontierville, watched Ghana beat the US and I NAPPED. Oh yes, the joy of a weekend afternoon nap! But I'm obviously going to need to find a hobby. My kid doesn't need ME to play with him anymore. It is bittersweet, as a lot of stages of parenting are, but it is so amazing when he asks me if he can go outside and play.

YES! YES! Go outside! Ha.

Except, this morning, he scared me to death by showing up at my bedside at the crack of dawn and staring at me. He has not done that in ages. I am a light sleeper and hard to sneak up on. He was dressed and asked me if he could go outside and play. It was probably no later than 7am. I told him that Austin and Trinity were probably still sleeping and he should go play in his room or watch TV.

That's ANOTHER thing. The TV. We have it "child locked" so no programing rated PG-13 or higher gets through without the code. It probably won't take him long to figure that out. But there are still things on there I'd rather him not watch. Yet, there he sits, sometimes, with the remote in hand, in charge of the TV. Weird. Pretty soon he'll be able to call a grandparent or a friend on my cell phone by himself, too. OH! And he can get to his few favorite websites on the laptop with no trouble at all.

There is a lot of anxiety in this parenting thing. As relaxed as I am getting, I'm always on guard, as well, at least internally. On Friday, we went down to the splash pad at the park down the street. We had the place to ourselves for a while, then an older kid walked down with a really cool remote control car. I didn't want Isaac to bother the kid, so I kept calling him back to me, but the draw of that car was too much for him. The kid was awesome, though and let Isaac try driving the car. Pretty soon, they were playing together. I talked with the kid some, found out his name and that he was 13. 13. And willing to play with a 6-year-old? When I told Pat about it, he was OK (and he's a professional). He explained that he was a lot like that at 13, because he was the youngest and never had a younger sibling to play with, guide, take care of, etc.

The boys played in the water and in the sand, they swang and jumped and drove the car around. Everything the kid did, Isaac tried to do, as well. I never saw anything that raised any red flags, but I could NOT relax. It was wearing me out. They climbed the chain link fence around the tennis court and the kid gave Isaac a boost. I watched him like a hawk. Where was he touching him? Was it appropriate? It is a sick, sad world that we live in that I had to do that. They ran around the other side of the tennis courts and wrestled on the ground like puppies. At one point, Isaac was laying on top of the kid and I called them back over closer where I could watch them. Other than that, everything was cool. But I didn't FEEL cool about it.

I really felt for this kid, living with his Grandpa for the summer while his dad is in South Dakota. He said when his dad gets back, they are moving to Springfield. He had t-shirt on from a small town near Springfield and I asked him about it. He said it was the "last school he went to." That seemed sad. No mention of a grandma or a mom or brothers or sisters. He said that he just "walks around and stuff" while his grandpa is at work. He had a cell phone and his grandpa called in to check on him while we were there. He had my sympathy, but not my trust.

Isaac has been outside playing most of the day today, as well, since we got back from church. I had him come inside and clean his room and rest for a little while and then he was ready to go back outside again. He came charging in the door a little while ago, excitedly rambling that Trinity's dad was going to take them all down to the splash pad. This was not OK with us. We don't know Trinity's dad that well. He said Austin's dad was going too. Again, I don't want him going that far away without one of us being with him and he has been at the splash pad this weekend twice already, it would be OK if he missed this time.

Of course, it was not OK with him. "But AUSTIN and TRINITY get to go!!!" It was one of our first opportunities to use the "well if they jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" approach, or my favorite, "I'm not Austin or Trinity's parent, I'm YOUR parent and I say NO." Pat was talking to him and he mouthed off to him and went out the door. Oooh...yeah...that got ugly. Life's not fair little man.

But I still remember that horrible feeling of missing out on something fun because my parents were "MEAN" and said no. Now that I'm a parent, I know that they had reasons for saying no. Good reasons. They weren't just being mean. We want our kids to be happy, but at what cost? To the point where they become ungrateful little monsters who are in charge of US instead of the other way around? No thanks.

So, he's moping around acting like his world has come to an end and he doesn't have a friend in the world.

He'll get over it. Well all did.