Let Her Be Eleven

Tuesday Pause™

Last week, my youngest daughter turned eleven. She received quite a bit of money for her birthday, and naturally, I asked her what she wanted to do with it. Her answer? She wanted to go to the store and buy toys. And, strangely enough, that made me happy, but not because I wanted to spend hours walking through the toy aisle. I was happy in that moment, because I realized something: she is still a child, and she should be. But why were my emotions about that moment strange?

You see, there have been times in the past when I have looked at my youngest daughter and wondered if she was behind. Should she be interested in different things by now? Should she have outgrown certain things? Should she be acting a little older? But lately, I have found myself asking a different question: Behind whom? Who decided what eleven is supposed to look like?

Maybe she isn’t behind at all. Maybe we’ve just gotten too comfortable with children growing up too fast.

I Remember being her. I can remember being around twelve years old and still enjoying playing with dolls. I had a cousin who had this outdoor Barbie house, and whenever I went to her house, I wanted to go outside and play with it. This frustrated her, because she wanted to do something else, but I was simply being a child. I wasn’t thinking about whether I was too old or whether playing with Barbies made me immature. I just wanted to play.

There is this interesting tension happening as I watch her grow. She started her period about a month before she turned eleven. I had been preparing her for quite some time because I knew it could happen at any moment. For nearly two years, she carried a little “period purse” in her bookbag, although in her eagerness for her period to finally come, she had somehow used up all the pads before it ever arrived. Now that it has, the excitement has worn off pretty fast. Recently she asked me, “When does it end?” I giggled and told her, “Girl, you’ve got at least another 39 years.”

And maybe that is what makes this season so interesting to me. Her body is changing, but she is still a child. Puberty did not suddenly make her grown. Starting her period did not mean she stopped wanting toys, playing, imagining, or needing the freedom to simply be eleven.

Somewhere along the way, though, our culture started treating childhood like something children should hurry up and graduate from. We celebrate when they look older. We laugh when they talk grown. We expose them to adult conversations, problems, expectations, and sometimes even responsibilities, and then wonder why children are struggling with things many of us didn’t encounter until much later. There is a difference between preparing a child for the world and rushing a child into it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this isn’t only about childhood. Maybe childhood is simply where the rushing begins.

We rush children to grow up, teenagers to figure out their futures, and adults toward careers, marriage, homes, children, success, and whatever is supposed to come next. We reach one milestone only to immediately look for another. Before we realize it, we can spend an entire life trying to arrive somewhere without ever actually being where we are.

Much of that rushing is fueled by comparison. Society hands us timelines and calls them normal. It tells us what maturity, success, and happiness should look like and what we should have accomplished by a certain age. Yet I find myself wondering why we take so many instructions on happiness from a society that increasingly seems unhappy within itself.

We have become skilled at the external facade. We know how to look successful, happy, accomplished, and put together while internally being exhausted, anxious, disconnected, and unsure whether the life we’re racing toward is even the life we want. Maybe the goal was never to keep up.

Maybe we need to slow down long enough to discover who God actually created us to be. An eleven-year-old wanting toys shouldn’t feel unusual. A twelve-year-old wanting to play shouldn’t be embarrassing. Children shouldn’t feel pressured to abandon imagination, curiosity, silliness, or wonder because the world has decided they should be more mature.

There will be plenty of time for adulthood. Bills, responsibilities, disappointments, heartbreaks, and difficult decisions will eventually come. Why are we in such a hurry to get them there? Sometimes, I think we confuse maturity with exposure. A child knowing about adult things doesn’t necessarily make them mature. It should actually give us pause because perhaps they were introduced to something before they were emotionally ready to carry it. And once innocence is lost, we cannot simply hand it back.

But, maybe innocence is about more than what children haven’t been exposed to. Maybe it is also the freedom to dream before someone tells you what isn’t possible. To create without wondering whether it will be profitable. To play without asking whether it is productive. To imagine without immediately calculating the risks. To simply be without feeling pressured to become something else. Perhaps that’s part of what we’re rushing children away from and part of what so many adults are desperately trying to find again.

Children are naturally curious. They explore, ask questions, and try things without spending nearly as much time as adults calculating everything that could go wrong. Of course, children have instinctive responses to danger, but many of the fears and insecurities they eventually carry are learned. What if they don’t like me? What if I fail? What will people think? What if I’m different? They learn from experiences, peers, the world around them, and from us.

Sometimes, while trying to protect our children, we hand them our own fears. We tell them to be careful because we are afraid. We discourage something because disappointment taught us not to expect too much. We teach them to worry about what people think because we have spent years doing the same. Maybe raising children isn’t only about teaching them what they need to know. Maybe it is also about being careful what we teach them to fear.

I have raised six children, and when I look back, I recognize that some of my children had to grow up faster than I would have wanted them to. Life was different. I was different. Circumstances were different. Maybe that’s another reason watching my youngest daughter simply be a child means so much to me. She gets to slow down. She gets to play, be silly, want toys, and experience eleven without being pushed toward twenty-one. I don’t want to mistake that privilege for immaturity. I want to protect it, because one day, she won’t ask me to take her to the store for toys. The dolls, stuffed animals, games, and childhood things will quietly lose their appeal. Adulthood will come knocking, and it won’t need my help getting here. So today, I don’t need her to hurry. I want her to laugh loudly, ask a thousand questions, imagine impossible things, and dream before the world tells her what is realistic. I want her to discover who God created her to be before comparison starts telling her who she should become. And maybe, while giving her permission to slow down, I’m realizing that I need that permission too.

We can become so consumed with getting somewhere that we treat the present like a waiting room for the future, but while we’re waiting for the next thing, life is happening. The birthday is happening. The trip to the toy aisle is happening. The conversation in the car is happening. The ordinary Tuesday afternoon is happening. These are the moments we will one day wish we could have back.

Maybe slowing down doesn’t mean we stop growing. Maybe it means becoming present enough to experience the growth. Present enough to dream. Present enough to hear God. Present enough to notice what is happening right now instead of constantly asking what comes next.

My daughter isn’t behind. She’s eleven. And I’m learning to let eleven be enough.

Maybe that’s the lesson for all of us.

There will always be another goal, another milestone, another season, another version of ourselves waiting somewhere ahead, but perhaps we weren’t created to spend our entire lives rushing toward what’s next. I think one of our greatest struggles is regret. We spend so much time wishing we had done things differently, arrived sooner, or known then what we know now that we can begin rushing ourselves—and even our children—through the very lessons we need to learn, but I have no doubt that there is something in eleven that my daughter needs for twelve and beyond. Something she is learning, experiencing, or becoming right now that will prepare her for what comes next. If I rush her through this season, I may also rush her past something God intended for her to receive from it.

Perhaps there are some seasons we aren’t supposed to hurry through. Maybe the purpose isn’t simply to get to the next one, but to allow God to get everything out of us, and put everything into us—that this one was meant to provide.

Tuesday Pause

Before you rush a child—or yourself—toward the next stage, pause and ask:

Am I preparing for what’s next, or am I rushing through something I’ll never get back?

Give children permission to dream, and give yourself permission to dream again. Slow down long enough to be present, to hear God, and to experience the life you’re living while you’re actually living it.

Childhood doesn’t need to be hurried. Neither does life. Some moments aren’t meant to get us to the next thing. Some moments are simply meant to be lived.