The shape of childhood

Talking about jam sandwiches, as we were, this seems a good moment to try out one of my theories on you. I have decided that childhood - from a parent's point of view - is like a sandwich. It goes like this.

The years from 0 to 5 are full of change. You can hardly keep up. As soon as you've got used to one stage, you're through it and into the next. Each one greets you not in some considered way, but in a bewildering moment that you feel unprepared to deal with. Your child grows, changes, evolves all the time, and it's easy to feel you're hurtling down a bobsled run without a clue of what's round the next corner.

Then they go to school, and it all calms down a bit, after the initial learning curve (less of a learning curve than a climbing wall where you are roped together with other parent climbers, all of you puzzling how to use the crampons). Between the ages of 5 and 13 or 14, the whole process slows down. The child still grows, still learns about the world, still explores themselves. They have their highs and lows, their joys and woes, and you are part of that. But it feels like it's more of the same. More birthday parties, just with the participants getting bigger year by year. More homework and projects, just with the subject matter getting harder and the level more challenging. More fun and activities, just with the children's energy levels and abilities increasing, whilst your own ones are decreasing. Time can go by frighteningly fast, but the milestones become familiar, and it's a question of "gosh, another school term over already", rather than "what the heck is happening here?". The bobsled run has levelled out into a road that you can see ahead, winding across a gently-sloping plateau.

You've been lulled into a false sense of security. Watch out. When your oldest starts secondary education, you're hurtling down the bobsled run again, banging into the sides, rolling round the corners at alarming angles. Secondary school is a new, bigger climbing wall, without any crampons at all. The parent ropes are much harder to tie, because you're not meeting daily in the classroom or at the gate. The kids are growing, changing, evolving with the speed that they did when toddlers. They suddenly develop new skills and interests, and want to know where the boundaries are. Those boundaries aren't just a gentle expansion of existing ones, as you've become used to, but the edges of whole new territories. You are careering downhill again, and the speed is faster and you have less control than ever before. It feels like there's more at stake, too.

When I had a toddler, I hated that remark that was sometimes tossed my way "Oh, just wait till they're teenagers". I vowed I'd never say that to anyone. But I do offer you my sandwich model. The three stages of childhood. What do you think?