Let me start by saying that my 7-year-old very much has a mind of her own. She’s often happy to cooperate with my various plans and schemes, but she does so on her terms. If I float an idea and she gets on board, then she is committed and it becomes her plan, too, and I better be ready to go through with it. I suspect that when I am old and she is middle aged, she will be routinely hounding me about my doctor’s appointments, completely against my will. She is shaping up to be… a bit Type A, let’s just say. If she had younger siblings, she would fit the stereotype in a way that I, despite being an eldest daughter, do not. (Though it’s entirely possible I am just wildly un-self-aware.)
All of this is to say that recently, I had one of those parenting milestones you don’t expect: just letting her pack her own damn suitcase.
I’ve never been very particular about her clothes. I enjoy shopping for her, but I’ve long since accepted that she’s going to wear what she wants, when she wants, and everybody’s happier if I just occasionally point out that it’s 55 degrees and she’ll probably want an additional layer. I check with her before I even buy anything, because what’s the point of spending money on a cute dress that’s just going to sit in her closet? It doesn’t matter how much I love that adorable little matching set if she rejects it without even trying it on (as she recently did this one; I ask you, why??? At least she had the good sense to agree to this shell dress).
But still, when I walked into her room earlier this week to pack her bag TOGETHER! for our trip to her grandparents’ house, I wasn’t prepared for the fact that it was packed. She had done it already. And she was not interested in so much as unzipping it for me to look. In fact, when I started to unzip it, she protested vigorously.
Now, granted, we’d just returned from a trip, and I had stacked things that absolutely had to go in the bag around it. So I knew she’d included, for instance, the long-sleeved swimsuit and the long hiking pants she really needed to bring. I knew there were at least some summer clothes in there. And as I stood there quizzing her, she insisted she included shorts. She said she packed underwear. She said there were at least two swimsuits.
But how was I to know whether she had everything she needed? What if she forgot something? What if she didn’t bring her cutest things?
As I stood there staring at her bulging suitcase that I knew probably contained as much doll clothing as child clothing, I had to face the facts: parenting is just one moment after another of realizing that you can’t pack their suitcase for them forever, and sooner or later they’re going to get somewhere and realize they forgot something important, and you just have to have some confidence in the fact that they’ll either figure it out or deal. It came earlier than expected, but that’s how it goes.
The joke’s on me, anyway: when we packed to go to Disney World in April, I ran the show. I made sure she had the cutest dresses she owned and her choice of princess costumes and a Star Wars getup too. What did we find ourselves in Florida without? Underwear. So maybe it’s time to let her take control. But still, as I finished packing my bag, I tucked a couple extra pairs of her shorts and socks in, just in case. And it’s not like they don’t have stores in Maine.
Kelly Faircloth is the executive editor at Scary Mommy, where she commissions freelance pieces. If you’ve got a story you’d like to share, pitch her here! She’d love to hear from you.
Previously, Kelly worked at Jezebel.com, where she was a senior editor and also wrote about royal gossip and romance novels, along with body image and history. She grew up in Georgia between a river and a railroad, and she has a lot of questions about the world-building in Paw Patrol.
