Acceptance

On my way to drop the kids at school the other day I passed a group of kids waiting for the bus, rather, I passed two groups of kids waiting for the same bus. They had clearly segregated themselves into the "us" and the "them" and each group stood on their own side of the road. It got me to thinking.
When my kids started preschool at age three there were no groups. Everyone was a kid and everyone played with each other. Sure, the rowdy kids played with each other more and the quiet kids played with each other more, but for the most part, this was the class and just being in the class was enough to be friends. Nobody was looking to find their place in the world because there was nothing to find. I'm a preschooler, you're a preschooler, we're all preschoolers! Let's play!
Sometime between then and junior high, the whole idea that we all fit in everywhere falls apart and they start to tear the larger group into smaller groups. They split by sex and by personality and by ability and in my kid's school, language. They fragment into small groups and they stand together with their faces turned inward to their group and their backs to those that don't belong. I saw it at the bus stop and I see it when I'm at any school function. Already I'm seeing a lot more back and a lot less face myself when my older kids are around their friends.
I know that this is all normal. They're deep in the process of becoming themselves. From now on it's the interaction with their peers, and the acceptance of those peers that will largely determine who my kids become. If they're a boat at sea, I know I'm not the rudder that steers them, or the wind that pushes them along, I'm merely the ship builder that hopes he's built a straight keel for them to move forward on. I want to help my kids, I truly do, but with each passing day I can see that who they become and what successes they have in life increasingly depend on them. I can't make their friends for them. I can't do their work. No only can I not fight their battles, but most of the time I can't even see them if they don't want me to.
Before we had kids a lot of people told us that the hardest parenting was when they were little. They needed you to feed them and change them and take care of pretty much every aspect of their existence. Their neediness was exhausting, physically and emotionally draining, and it was hard. They get bigger and they get more independent and things do get easier. That much is true. I'm starting to think that maybe there are two hard times though. The first part when they need you for everything, and the second, which is starting to happen now, when they might not need you for anything at all. Acceptance of that will be hard.