Will I Still Be Good at It When We Get There?

In many of my posts, I have looked forward to what it will be like to be the father of a teenager and various other stages of the development of the Koalid. However, as I spend most nights sleeping poorly, change another diaper, and play another round of "Why Are You Crying Now?", I realize that time is quite a ways away.

The Koalid will be a teenager at 13, according to the grammatical definition. That is about 12 years from now, 2027. 12 years ago was 2003, at which time I was 1 year out of college and just getting started running Phoenix Games. That was so long ago that I am almost a completely different person now than I was then. I live in a different state than I did then. I still speak regularly to very few people who were very close to me then.

Kind of like that. Well, hopefully not.

I have often thought that I would do well in raising a strong, healthy, confident young woman because, quite frankly, I have invested a great deal of time and effort in getting to understand young women. I have been friends with many women who have shared with me a great deal about their upbringing, and this has given me a good grasp of how different aspects and styles of parenting manifest into adulthood.

This was me (on the left) in 2003 with the team that started
Phoenix Games. I am in Facebook contact with two of
these people, and have not seen any of them in over a year.

By the time the Koalid has reached teenage years, these informative relationships will be a decade or more behind me. It makes me wonder if I will still remember then, the things I know now. I believe that I will because most of what I have learned has formed into a broad concept that I retain even as the details that led to it are forgotten. It does make me wonder how many parents understand well what a young person needs when their children are born because they are young at the time, but they age away from their children's experience simply because of the vast length of time it takes for a child to age.

Here comes the future... one day at a time.

They grow up so fast.