When you are a father (or mother) it is common for an acquaintance or friend, who has already been a father a few years ago to tell you: “Take advantage of everything you can, that children grow very fast”. The council comes to say that we should try to live intensely every moment with our children because the day you least expect it, you will realize that they have grown, that they no longer need you as much as before and, what is worse, that you have missed many things from a childhood that will never come back.
From this phrase I have remembered to look for a while the vignette of Frato which heads this entry. In it we can see a girl play with a pretty rudimentary doll, imagining her role as a mother, taking care of her, feeding her and receiving her love.
Then some adult hands (those that usually "load" childhood and creativity of children by leaps and bounds) give the girl a new doll, so advanced, that even speaks and says "mom." The toy is so sophisticated that the girl ends up getting bored and realizing that with this new doll there is no place for imagination.
This is the quick reading that is extracted from the image, however I think that a second reading can be taken, if we put ourselves in the place of the mother-child, who enjoys and is happy in her role as caregiver, making childhood happy of the girl who needs her care at all times and who thanks him with a love response: "Mom, I love you so much."
Looking at the image on the right, we observe that the doll-girl has grown, has evolved, has left behind a stage of total dependence to give way to another stage with a different type of dependence and with a previously unthinkable autonomy. Now she walks, moves, is able to do things for herself and the mother realizes that her role has changed a lot.
Maybe he enjoyed more before, when the girl was younger, maybe he realized that a while ago he played with a doll-girl he enjoyed and now observes, that almost without realizing it, the girl-doll has grown so much that now she hardly needs it. In other words, the girl-mother of the second vignette suddenly realizes that her imaginary daughter's childhood has suddenly disappeared, observing that her girl, the one who smiled when she ate in her arms, the one who needed her touch to close her eyes at night and the one whose laughter of pure happiness infected everyone who heard her has become, almost without realizing it, an autonomous girl who doesn't need mom so much (or needs her any other way) and already has grown, like this, in a sigh, missing much of his childhood.
Time in quantity, and not just quality
We have talked many times about how important it is for children to spend time with their parents, whether considered quality or not. There are many authors who are showing that the first years of life are of vital importance in the emotional development of babies and that is why they are struggling in order to achieve longer maternal (p) losses and to offer children more time with their parents.
Whenever we talk about it, we explain it in terms of “what a child needs,” however, we rarely come to value what parents need and, interestingly, parents tend to have something in common when children are several years old. : Many moments of their children's childhood have been lost and they suddenly realize that they will never be able to live them again, since life only gives one chance.
As a working father, I can only regret the number of hours in which I do not know what my children are doing, what they are playing, what they are thinking, why they are crying or why they are smiling. I can't do anything else, so what I'm trying to do is try to "be" when I am with them.
“Take advantage of everything you can, that children grow very fast”
For all the comments I transcribe the advice they usually give me (which often comes from people who fall back into the same error when they become parents again - but this is another issue) and I offer it for anyone who wants to follow it: Take advantage of everything you can, that childhood passes very fast.
Share games, laughs, frustrations, cries, joys and boredom, learning and growing moments. Share the day and night, hugs and caresses, consolations and dialogues and ultimately make them partakers of our lives, being partakers of theirs.
Just as I can not imagine a sadder moment than that grandfather who decides to take stock of his life and realizes that he has left too many things to do, I can not even imagine arriving at a time when, as a father, I realize that my children have grown up and I have not been there to see it.
