There is no moment that a childhood ends. There is no moment—no disrespect to graduations or bar mitzvahs or quinceaneras or Selective Service registrations—where anyone suddenly becomes an adult.
No, it’s a process.
Seneca once said that our mistake is thinking of death as something that happens in the future—a single, final event. We are dying every day, he wanted us to understand, and all passing time belongs to death.
So it goes with childhood. Our kids don’t grow up at some point, they are growing up. Right now. Today a little more than yesterday. And once tomorrow comes, today is lost to you (and them) forever.
The point of this realization is not to make you anxious. If anything, it should calm you down. Right now matters. This moment is plenty. Be here for it. It’s not this year or that year, this phase or that milestone, that you should be looking forward to. It’s what’s happening here. It’s wonderful. It’s a lot. It is their childhood. So don’t rush through it—this is the moment, and it won’t come again.
