86: Little Jolt of Joy – Grand Gestures vs Small Moments

Milestones and Moments

A little jolt of joy today about milestones and moments, prompted by my own family standing at the crossroads of some big life changes right now. We tend to stress heavily over the big markers of time, graduations, birthdays, moves, driver’s licenses, the milestones that get cemented in memory because they’re supposed to matter. For ADHD moms especially, there’s a particular flavor of guilt around these moments, a fear that our struggles with planning and execution are somehow failing the people we love most.

What actually sticks in a child’s memory

Now that my kids are old enough to reminisce with, I’ve noticed something surprising: it’s rarely the grand, carefully planned gestures that stuck with them. It’s the small, effortless things.

Case in point, birthday parties. I’ve never been great at throwing big ones, whether by instinct or by circumstance, I honestly can’t remember. But when I asked my kids what they actually treasure about their birthdays looking back, only two things came up, and neither involved streamers, party guests, or elaborate planning.

The cake tradition

I’m no cake artist, but nearly every birthday, I’d let each kid choose their cake flavor, their icing color, and whatever design mattered most to them at that moment in their life, then I’d do my best to decorate it. This came straight from my own mother, who used to recreate simple coloring book pages onto our birthday cakes, mine were almost always horses. I never consciously labeled it a tradition, I just carried it forward without thinking. Looking back at old cake photos now gives us this funny little window into who each of my kids was at each age. They didn’t remember the years I couldn’t quite pull it off, or the parties that were smaller and simpler than other families’. They just remembered that their cakes were special.

The “last hug” tradition

The other one warms my heart even more. For years, the night before each birthday, I’d give an exaggeratedly long hug and announce something like, “This is my last four-year-old hug from you,” then the next morning, “This is my first five-year-old hug.” I did this with all of them, every year, long past the point where they were rolling their eyes at me. I remember distinctly one evening finding one of my boys lingering near bedtime, and when I asked why, he sheepishly said, “Don’t you want your last twelve-year-old hug?” My heart nearly broke and grew seven sizes at once.

Recently, my oldest turned twenty and came to me the next morning saying I’d forgotten to get my last nineteen-year-old hug. I teared up immediately. He told me it was okay, that he was fine, clearly trying to comfort me more than the other way around. But I found a loophole, he wasn’t technically born until 11:55 that morning, so at 9:30 he was still nineteen, and we got our hug in just under the wire. Then at 11:56, we hugged again for his new age.

The real lesson

None of this took planning, execution, or perfect timing. It took showing up in a small, consistent way. If you’re an ADHD mom carrying guilt about not measuring up to the moms who seem to have every party detail, every gift bag, every balloon order handled flawlessly, let this be your reminder: your kids aren’t keeping score on any of that. They’re keeping the small, repeated gestures that told them they were loved and celebrated, exactly as they are.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.