Pants-Free Parenting: Parents are a child’s first role models

My daughter is 4 now and she tells me she is 'so old.”

'But,” she clarifies, 'I'm not die-old or funny-eyes old. Just big old.”

She is indeed big old. In the past few months, she's begun to get her own snacks, help me tidy up and started helping to empty the dishwasher. She does most of these tasks without complaining. We haven't made official chores yet. We just explain that helping out is part of being in a family and she usually complies. She loves to help for now.

A few days ago, during rest time, she grabbed herself some strawberries from the fridge and then washed and then ate them. I watched her amazed. 'Who told you to wash fruit?”

She shrugged. 'I just watched you. I watch you so I can knowed how to be big.”

That sentence both warmed my heart and struck fear to my very core. What else had she seen? What else did she emulate? And what exactly am I showing her about what it means to be big?

For the first few years of parenthood, life is just about survival. How do you get your child to eat? To sleep? To stop picking their nose? It consumes you, but little by little they start putting on their jackets, tying their shoes, washing their own strawberries and the need is less physical. My daughter doesn't need me in the immediate way that my son does. I change his diapers. I change his clothes. I wash his face and his hands and remind him not to eat rocks. But my daughter needs none of those things. And in that is a certain amount of freedom. I can read a book while she plays. I can ask her to help me while I make dinner.

And while I am so excited to watch her grow, I'm also terrified. Because as she learns independence, her need for me doesn't end, it just shifts. Her need for me is more subdued. She still needs hugs and smooches and cuddles at night. But she is also watching and learning - taking little mental notes. I'm an omen of her future, for good or for bad. There are pieces of me that she will want to excise, there are others she will want to cling to. And there are still others that she won't even realize that are me until one day, when she is watching her own daughter wash the strawberries.

I am not the only role model in my daughter's life and I am glad of that. As you can tell from these columns, I'm not a perfect parent. I would never try to be. I'm glad she has a father who is so patient, smart and kind. I'm glad she has grandmothers and the baby sitter and the little girl up the street whom she worships. She also has half a dozen aunts and uncles she can turn to if I fail - and I will.

But watching her wash those strawberries, I was suddenly struck at how my role had changed. I was now in a spotlight so much more intense than nighttime feedings or teething ever were. And I also realized that whoever she grows into will be wonderful and I'm already proud of that little person in the making.

- Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.