Off to college in 15 minutes

My son is 9. Very funny and persuasive. A pretty good baseball player. And was born with an easygoing nature that goes a long way toward making parenthood pretty easy for his folks. But there remain two areas that frustrate us. Since he turned one, he refuses to try any new food, though he will strike previously acceptable foods off his list of consumables. And in the face of many organized efforts to teach him to go to sleep on his own, he still often needs a parent to lie in bed with him. I should mention that literally since the day he was born, he has refused to settle down for the night before 9:30 and often not til 10:30. From the day he was born.

My husband and I both work full time and we are both in busy music bands. We each have a sufficiently bloated schedule that the boy is often with only one parent from the time he gets home from school to the time he "goes to bed" for the evening. On one particular night between last Thanksgiving and New Years, he was home with me. We don't turn the TV on and limit his time on the computer or video games on school nights. So he was distraction-free. He was glued to my side the entire evening, talking to me mostly about imaginary space battles from his Star Trek imagination. Or reviewing with me plot points from episodes he'd seen before but didn't quite understand. Or just wanted to talk about again. And as the night lumbered along toward bed time, he became increasingly reluctant to let me out of his sight or away from his side. He wouldn't brush his teeth unless I was in the bathroom with him. He wouldn't go upstairs to put his pajamas on unless I went up too. He wouldn't lie down on the bed to read unless I lay down too. He wanted me to read to him. I agreed to every request, and finally, around 10:15, and feeling not a little bit exasperated, I manged to turn the light off.

"Mom?"

"Yes, son?"

"Will you tell me a story?"

In a much more negative and frustrated tone than I like to use, I answered with. "You really should be able to put yourself to sleep now that you are nine years old. You really need to think about why it is that you won't leave my side all night and then you can't just lie in your room and put yourself to sleep. Why is that? Can you give me any idea?" I was not expecting an answer.

He was quiet for a moment, and then responded with this. "Well, in about eight or nine years, I'm going to go to college." "Right." "And that time is going to pass by before we know it. It's going to seem like fifteen minutes. Or maybe two weeks." [A beat.] "And I really just want to get to know you, and spend time with you before then."

My negative attidude disappeared. Poof. I made up a story about a kid who found a spacecraft in his back yard and pushed a button and took a trip through the solar system, and counted my blessings. And I didn't stop the story until he was fast asleep.