How To . . . Set Up Your Life For Babies, Middle Childhood, and Teenagers

Parenting In Three Phases

In this piece I will detail the basic needs and hidden requirements of the three phases of childhood, as well as steps you can take to make both your home and your local community amenable to what kids need the most in their various stages of development.

Roughly, these stages are: Birth to Five Years/Six to Fourteen/Fifteen through College.

One of the most helpful things I ever read on parenting was Leila Lawler’s “second decade” series from her epic 2010s blog Like Mother Like Daughter. Her whole series (and Substack!) is excellent, but the part that has stuck with me is her observation that the first ten years of raising children really are different in kind from the second ten.

I have found that my husband and I really needed to stop horsing around with real estate and remodeling and “where should we live?” jockeying by the time our oldest was about ten. After kids hit ten, you need to have the table set because it’s actually very late in the day. The next decade absolutely flies by, its good harvests largely dictated by what you sow in the early years. I found I could play around and dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up during the first decade. The second decade necessitates an actual adult.

A lot of unforeseen challenges and opportunities come along and, upon reflection, had we known they were coming, we would have fashioned our first ten years differently!

So, a day before Halloween, I offer you this crystal ball: the three stages of childhood as I see them, and what kids need most from their parents, family life, and community during each phase.