The After Bed Party

On Conversations, Memories, and the Parent I’ve Become

My husband, our little one, and I have houseguests this weekend. Special ones, because the guest of honor is a friend of our youngest. A real friend. The first person who has ever come to visit just for him.

They met in kindergarten and clicked immediately. Two peas in a pod: loud, silly, carrot-eating, potty-word-loving little boys. His parents came too, and they are warm, thoughtful, and easy to be around. They’ve been our go-to conversation buddies at birthday parties and soccer games, but until this visit, we didn’t know them well. It’s been a delight to spend time together and get to know them. But also, it made us feel our age. I suppose that’s what happens when you have a baby at forty-one and fifty-one. My husband could probably be their dad, if I’m being honest.

A twist this weekend: our big kids are out of town. Without our nineteen- and seventeen-year-olds, the whole rhythm of the house has shifted. And with it, the tone of our conversations.

Most of our close friends have kids the same age as our older ones, so we’ve long since moved past debates about bedtime and screen time. But this weekend, we’re back in it. Right back in the trenches of parenting young children. Independence versus dependence. Limits versus freedom. The classic puzzles of raising little kids.

I think our guests may have been a little thrown by the FaceTime call I took from my oldest in the middle of one of those conversations. He called to show me his new nose ring. He didn’t ask permission. He just got it. I looked at the screen, nodded, and said, “Looks good.” Then we moved on. That might have been their crash course in the fact that parenting a teenager looks nothing like parenting a six-year-old. And thank God for that.

What I’ve been thinking about most, though, aren’t the parenting philosophies or the daytime chaos. It’s the conversations that happened after the kids went to bed. When the house finally got quiet. When the stories began. When the truths came unguarded.

When my oldest was little, he used to call that time of night The After Bed Party. He dubbed it that one night when he snuck out of bed and caught me watching Netflix and eating Nutella by the spoonful. He found me in the magical moment when the house finally settled and I got to do something just for me. It was how I recovered from the day.

This weekend, though, the After Bed Party looked a little different. It was grown-up conversation, and it was honest, funny, and tender. But the purpose was the same. To unwind. To exhale. To find ourselves after a long day, this time in the company of new friends.

We talked about the early years. The pandemic babies. The guilt. The beauty. The fear of raising kids in a world that doesn’t always feel safe. The sweetness and the weight of it.

I don’t talk about those things much anymore, but it took me right back. Back to when I had two babies sixteen months apart. When I was finishing a dissertation and trying to learn how to be a therapist. When my husband was working insane hours and I was stretched thin and deeply tired.

Those years hold some of my fondest memories and some of my hardest. Every day felt like a fight. I loved my family. I loved my work. But I couldn’t see past the exhaustion. I had mostly lost myself.

And somewhere in the midst of all this talking, I realized something. All my stories of parenting angst are about my older kids.

Because those were the days before the plane crash. Before COVID. Before my son went to residential treatment. Back when I still felt like a regular parent. Before I’d earned the kind of perspective that only grief, loss, and heartbreak can bring.

And that’s when I was reminded: even though my youngest has the same two parents as my older boys, he’s being raised by very different people.

I feel for my older kids sometimes, because I had to learn from them. And I had to learn more from life. My little guy is the beneficiary of that learning. Not because I’ve become the perfect parent. But because I’ve learned to show up differently. We hold boundaries more consistently. We respond to his dysregulation with our own regulation. We’ve stopped worrying so much about what other people see. What matters is our consistency. What matters is how we stay connected, even when things are hard.

And so this weekend, I didn’t just enjoy the chaos. I enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed walking down memory lane. I enjoyed seeing, clearly, how much I’ve changed as a parent.

This weekend’s After Bed Party didn’t come with Nutella or Netflix. It came with honesty, memory, and the pleasant surprise of realizing who I’ve become. And if I’m being honest, it also came with rice krispie treats and brownies. Thank you, houseguests.

Mostly, I feel energized by parenting now…as long as I still get to take a nap.