Letting the Children Be the Children
My children are not asked to carry adult things. I keep the adult things in adult hands, and I let the children stay in their childhood.
Have you held the quiet vow that your children will not be turned into small messengers, small interpreters, small adults? They will be allowed to remain children. Their job is to be children. Their work is the work of growing up at their own pace. Your work is the work of keeping the larger world of grown-up matters away from their small shoulders.
This is not always easy. There are moments when it would be quicker to ask a child to relay something, or to interpret something, or to take on a piece of information they do not need to be holding. Resist those moments — small, patient, protective — the way you would resist any small theft from their childhood.
When you keep adult communication between adults, you are not just protecting your child today. You are protecting the structure of childhood itself. A child whose job is being a child grows up differently than a child whose job is being a small adult. You are giving them the room to grow up at the right pace. That is a profound, often invisible gift.
If something arrives at your door through your child — a message they have been asked to deliver, a piece of information they have been asked to carry — you can receive it without making them responsible for it. Thank you for telling me, honey. That's grown-up stuff. I'll handle it from here. Your only job is to be you. They will exhale. They have been waiting for someone to say exactly that.
You are the keeper of the boundary between grown-up matters and child matters. The boundary is invisible, but it is real. First the small choice not to use them as a courier. Then the steady habit of taking the longer way. Then, slowly, a childhood that does not have grown-up weights pressed into it.