THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

Life is a journey.

It is the long and winding road.

Sometimes, the road is smooth. Other times, it's bumpy.

It is about discoveries. And about obstacles.

At no time is the “Life is a journey” metaphor more apparent than when the “long and winding road” is the two blocks between your house and your kids' primary school or Pre-K activity. The time, effort and patience needed to take small children to a destination cannot be underestimated. A ten-minute walk can easily become an hours-long undertaking. And the journey starts long before heading out the door. Like all monumental treks, there is much planning, provisioning and preparation required.

First, one must gear up. Getting your children dressed for the journey, to the uninitiated, might seem uncomplicated. “Child’s play” even. Those who have gone through parent0-hazing know this is not remotely the case. There is a whole psychological sub-journey at play - one that involves many stages of childhood development:

- The ‘Protest’ phase where your child defies being manhandled by rendering their limbs limp like noodles, or stiff as boards - whichever option makes it physically impossible to dress them.

- The ‘Nudist’ phase where your child’s ‘outfit' of choice involves nothing but rubber boots, regardless of outdoor temperature.

- The ‘24/7 Costume’ phase where the child’s outfit, after days/weeks of continuous wear, is a science experiment that will only be coming off when it disintegrates.

- The ‘Non-Sequential Thinking’ phase where your child struggles with order of operations and finds themselves wearing their undies on the outside of their pants or confounded by how to put those same pants when already wearing their snow boots.

- The ‘Matching’ phase where your child insists on wearing all 5-15 parts of an outfit that originally came attached together but has never again been on the same plane of existence.

- The ‘It Itches’ phase where any seam or tag renders an item of clothing unwearable.

- The ‘Don’t Rush Me’ phase which is generally also the “Frozen in Time” phase.

With multiple children, there will always be at least one kid working through a phase. On occasion you may get a Perfect Parenting Storm when everyone - likely yourself included - is going through a phase at once. Your best Parent-Self will celebrate these phases as a sign of your child's growing autonomy. Your In-Real-Life-Parent-Self will be less accommodating, aka losing it.

Every expedition also requires provisions for your band of intrepid travellers. You must pack snacks that accommodate not only your child’s dietary restrictions and firmly held preferences/food phobias, but also the allergies of every member of the class/activity group/planet. These snacks must be consumable while in motion, by children whose dexterity is significantly limited by age and/or mittens. For full marks these snacks must be nutritious, organic, sugar-free, fun to consume, and zero waste. They must be stored in easily accessible, non-plastic, re-useable containers, ideally made from recycled bee’s wax. To successful cross the Snackery pass/fail line, you must own a minimum of 3-5 mini muffin trays so that you can make 6 dozen “one bite” banana muffins simultaneously (subbing apple sauce for eggs, obviously).

Finally, the actual journey begins! It should be straight forward from here on out, right? Alas, the last word one would use when walking with little kids is “straight". Young children largely operate in a magical, imagination-fuelled alternative universe. There are wonders to discover at every turn. The route you are attempting to navigate is an Imaginarium, combined with a petting zoo, combined with Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Small children do not abide by sidewalks. It is more like…door, to tree, to worm, to bush, back to tree, to piece of gravel, to piece of grass, back to worm, to stick…all before you have left the driveway. As a parent you are aspire to meet societal expectations by modelling patience and encouraging their curiosity. Meanwhile, you are desperately wondering if your will be so late to the drop off that the outing will merge directly into pick up time.

The route is also not taken at any consistent pace. It is continuously interrupted by out-of-nowhere physical and mental zigzags: spontaneous dancing, spontaneous wipeouts, spontaneous catatonic states, spontaneous nuclear meltdowns. The route is littered with countless time-consuming distractions that can extend walk time by multiples. These obstacles, like the disc swings hung for communal enjoyment by well-meaning neighbours, must be anticipated. Expectations must be proactively managed. As in: “We 100%, absolutely, without question do NOT have time to stop at the swing”, which will 100%, absolutely, without question have ZERO meaning to your child when they see the swing.

As the ten-minute walk extends into a ten-hour trek you will try to game the system by introducing transportation facilitators: the push-bikes, the scooters, the coasters, the wagons, the sleds, the pedal cars, the sport strollers, the bike trailers. This is not without potential pitfalls. You must balance the Tortoise vs Hare pace of children with polemic levels of capability, apprehension and cluelessness. The Motor Cross kid will blast to the end of the block and hover on the very edge of the curb at the corner. The Stunt Actor kid will constantly fling themselves out of the moving stroller. Meanwhile, the Wait-For-Me! child has a toddler version of the Razor scooter or BMX bike that they can’t make roll in the right direction, or at all. And the Nurturer child is repeatedly stopping to check on the stuffy they are attempting to push in a mini stroller with defective wheels. Invariably some, or all, of your children will abandon their vehicles (or you will confiscate them out of frustration) along the way. You will then have to carry it all like a pack mule. Post drop-off, you will (wrongly) consider abandoning your Sherpa duty and make up for lost time by riding the mini-bike/scooter/skateboard home – this decision would fail to calculate the time required for you to visit the ER.

This is all assuming fair weather. With inclement conditions – like, you know, “winter” - things can really go sideways. The Journey now truly becomes an expedition – one requiring expedition gear. These added layers of Down and Gortex double preparation time and render smaller children both completely immobile and impossible to carry. (Though not so immobile they can’t leave a Hansel & Gretel trail of mitts, hats, boots, socks in their wake.) Rain and snow also increase the enroute distractions – and corresponding ramifications. Every puddle is a Splash Pad. Every snowbank is calling for a Snow Angel. By the time you reach your destination, your child is invariably soaking wet, and you will be rethinking all the life decisions that lead to this moment. And this is assuming your child never uttered the most journey upending words: “I have to go pee!”

Despite the many bumps, obstacles and discoveries along the way you will, mostly, manage to get, somewhat, successfully to your destination. You will then be reminded about the other aspect of the “Life’s a journey” metaphor: that it is about the journey itself. Not the destination. Because, for the first five years of any child’s life, the activity at the end of the long and winding road will be sitting cross legged on a floor, or floating in tepid baby-pool water, in a circle and singing “The Wheels on the Bus”.

A song that, ironically, is about a journey.