Life Talk: Are Parents Doing A Disservice To Themselves By Giving In To Nostalgia?

As our kids grow up, most parents focus more on the lack of the little years than the abundance of your present moments with them. Why do this to yourself....?

When my youngest child turned 6, I fell head first into the pool of parental nostalgia. I would then look at my then 9 year old and see how different he was, how his mannerisms were no longer that little boy’s mannerisms….and just like that my eyes would swell up with tears.

I would go down to our basement and see their old strollers covered in dust, and I would be in awe at how fast time had passed by. I would look at all their toddler and early year toys they once couldn’t leave the house with, or stuffed animals they would cuddle with at night…so much sweetness and innocence that once made my heart so incredibly full. Then I would snap back to my reality - my little boys are not so little anymore.

For the next few years after that, I walked around with an immense feeling of lack in my heart and in my soul. I would be in the kitchen cutting veggies, staring at my almost pre-teen son, and my other big boy, and there go the tears again.

Slowly but surely, my boys would request to take down certain decorations that were in their rooms since their baby and toddler days. As I would be taking these things off of walls or shelves, I would remember with complete detail what I was wearing when I purchased these things, how excited I was, how alive I felt, how I felt that my heart was full and secure with all the joy and love it could ever want and need. And now, I was grabbing these symbolic things of a very different time, and storing them away in a dark and lonely basement.

Then I started noticing my husband was also starting to feel the same way I was feeling about our boys growing up. I would notice him scrolling through pictures and videos of them when they were really little. Sometimes he would watch a video, and then show me as I sat next to him in bed and ask, “remember this”? I wouldn’t know if I wanted him to show me because it would just make me so sad that I no longer had those versions of my little boys. Of course I remembered, but it hurt to watch.

Once my oldest turned 10, I started bonding with him in a different way. It was a more mature, but still very sweet and pure bond. We started having conversations that were more real, deep, and very meaningful. It was then I started realizing that in order to stop feeling this nostalgia that had been drowning me for a few years, I would have to lean in more towards what I gain from having older children.

You see, I was living in a cluster of lack daily. I would focus on what I no longer had, and what I no longer could experience. It may have been a drawn out “goodbye” to that phase of my life as a mother, but regardless I was too attached on my lack vs. my gains, my new blessings. More importantly, I had been extremely detached from my present.

I had been partially missing out on the present moments with my growing kids, because I was too consumed being nostalgic about their little years. I was missing the current moments with them because I was stuck in the past, and I didn’t know how to let go. But, it’s not that you’re letting go….it’s growing up as a parent. Just like our children must grow up, we also have to grow up. It’s just that our “growing up” is a little different — it’s evolving as human beings.

Evolving your soul is no easy task. But, it can happen seamlessly if we make sure to consistently be grounded and present. Want to make it even more seamless? Always be in gratitude — which means, count your blessings. Being in gratitude may take a bit more effort as our human nature tends to grasp onto what is going wrong in our lives, and what we wish we’d have, but don’t. You’ll have to train your brain for this one, but it’s not impossible. Overall, it’s about putting in that self development work.

I look back on my journey with daily nostalgia over my kids stepping out of their little years, and while it makes me sad to think about, it was necessary. It wasn’t something bad, it was just a right of passage. It was a time where I had no choice but to process and digest the end of one phase, and the exciting start to a new one. I just didn’t digest it easily because my soul wasn’t evolved enough, so the speed of stepping into a new phase with my kids was not in sync with my slow moving soul evolvement. But, eventually both became in sync, and now I can appreciate my children in their present moments, as well as enjoy being their mother during their older years.

So, if you are in this nostalgic era as a parent, make an effort to pull away from it little by little, and divert yourself to the NOW. What lights you up about your kids in this now moment? Focus on that. What meaningful things do your kids do with, or for you NOW? Focus on that. Appreciate all of that, and sit with it. That’s beautiful.

If you remain in parental nostalgia it will only suck you in more, until you’ve lost yourself completely. Our kids don’t deserve that. They deserve the best version of YOU. They deserve your complete presence. I promise life will be sweeter for them, and you once you leave the past in the past. Always be grateful for their little years, but it’s no longer your present. Your present is a gift, welcome it, indulge in it, and all else will follow.