Biglang Laki: Dealing with Your Kids Growing Up So Fast

Pushing open our gate, I am taken aback to see a strange man, back toward me, entering our house. Only when he turns around do I realize with a start that I am looking at my 12-year-old son, Marlon.

It seemed only yesterday that I brought him, a newborn, home from the hospital. Carrying him into our house, I marveled at how tiny he was, his mere 6.13-pound frame fitting perfectly in the crook of my arm.

A dozen years later Marlon is neither small nor slight. Nowadays he can lift me up effortlessly. And as he shoots up like the proverbial beanstalk on his second growth spurt, I am excitedly documenting his progress on our growth chart.


Time lines
Handwritten horizontal lines and the dates they were penciled in appear along the chart’s length. Of course, my husband and I have only one line each to represent us. His is located at slightly over five feet eight inches, mine is at five inches or so. The rest belong to Marlon and his younger brother, Mark Justin, put in at various times over the years, especially on their birthdays.

My eldest and I had taken to guessing how long it would take before he overtook me. We would be back-to-back, standing sideways before the mirror, and at times it looked like he had done it. But measured against the chart…no, not just yet apparently. Then a few weeks short of his twelfth birthday, it happened: Son finally surpassed his mother.

Marlon whooped it up as, indeed, the chart showed he was already half an inch taller than me. I double-checked and the results were the same.

While I was happy for him, I was a bit sad too. Staring at the freshly inked line, I realized what other parents had told me was true: Kids grow up so fast you never really know where the years have gone. But the chart only tracks how tall they’ve grown; it does not reveal the stories behind those growing years: the panic over childhood health emergencies, the frantic search for a child who got lost and, happily, was found, the mediating over silly fights between best friends, the happy days of birthday parties and lazy nights of storytelling.

Click here to read more about how the author, Romelda, dealt with her child's sudden growth spurt.

[previous|page|next]

Read more about how the author, Romelda, dealt with her child's sudden growth spurt.

Despite its worn-out look, I am increasingly fond of this chart, along with other kept reminders of times past. The children’s navel gauze and hospital name tags. Their photos waiting to be organized. Wispy strands from their first haircut. The baby teeth they hid under the pillow in hopeful exchange for a few pesos.


Growth overdrive
There’s no stopping Marlon as he sprints away from childhood into adulthood. Sometimes he complains of aches in his arms and legs, which I assure him are normal as his bones are growing faster than his muscles can keep up with. He also worries that he is developing breasts, as they have become tender. I tell him these will go away eventually, though we would visit his pediatrician if they didn’t.

My son is also starting to put emotional distance between himself and his parents and assert his independence. Once given freely, his kisses are now stingily dispensed and only after much coaxing. He prefers to stay behind with his barkada rather than grocery shop as a family, once an anticipated ritual. He often asks when he can be allowed to go out on his own with his friends.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from all this, it is to value the fleeting time that our children are still ours. Now I consciously treasure the simple family moments that come my way. With Mark, who is eight, I relish his insistence of a five-minute snuggle at bedtime or the way he readily plants a wet kiss on me, even with other people looking.

I continue to note down Marlon’s feats on our growth chart. He has easily and not unexpectedly outrun me. Now it is a race between him and his father, and I hope my son wins this one too.


 

Illustration by Mike Gallardo