Why I Kept Telling Myself My Kids Would “Grow Out of It” — and Why That Assumption Cost Us Time
Waiting felt patient. In hindsight, it was just postponement.
Every phase has an expiration date.
That’s what I told myself when my kids struggled at home. Growth spurts. Emotional development. Sensitivity that would smooth out with age.
Months passed. Then more months. And nothing actually resolved.
I kept waiting for time to do something it wasn’t doing.
Growing older didn’t change the pattern — it just made it more familiar.
Why “They’ll Grow Out of It” Feels So Reasonable
Kids change quickly.
Sleep improves. Emotions mature. Focus develops.
It made sense to assume these struggles were part of that arc.
Development explains a lot — until it explains the same thing forever.
Time passing didn’t equal progress — it just gave the pattern more room.
When Maturity Doesn’t Shift the Symptoms
As my kids got older, the symptoms didn’t disappear.
They changed shape. Emotional meltdowns became fatigue. Sleep struggles became hard mornings. Sensitivity became withdrawal.
This mirrored what I later described in why symptoms never fully disappeared at home.
Growth can mask strain without removing it.
Adaptation isn’t the same thing as healing.
Why I Confused Patience With Waiting
I didn’t want to overreact.
I didn’t want to assume something was wrong when it might resolve naturally.
So I waited — even as the same cycles repeated.
Waiting feels responsible when you don’t yet know what else to do.
Caution kept me still longer than clarity required.
How This Fit the Larger Pattern I Was Seeing
Once I stepped back, age wasn’t the variable.
Symptoms still eased away from home. They still rebuilt after time back. They still followed the same timeline.
This echoed what I shared in why symptoms quieted when we left the house and why symptoms followed the same timeline at home.
If time were the solution, something would have shifted by now.
Consistency across years told me more than any age milestone.
What Changed When I Stopped Waiting for Age to Fix It
The shift wasn’t urgency.
It was honesty.
I allowed myself to consider that something external might be shaping what time wasn’t resolving.
Understanding doesn’t require panic — it requires permission to look wider.
Letting go of the “phase” explanation finally opened the door to clarity.