“How was school today?” I asked my older son as we sat at the dinner table. He just looked at me. Trying a different tactic, I reframed the question, “What was the funniest thing that happened at school?” He just shrugged. Well, then.

While I’m always interested in what’s going on with my kids, this year is particularly intriguing to me. First grade is the first year that I have a lot of clear memories of my own childhood.

Of course, I have some memories that predate first grade. But most of them are fuzzy, like I’m recalling someone else’s life that they’ve told me about. Or they’re fragments, bits and pieces of sensory information not connected into a greater whole. There’s images of my babysitter’s house, but not what she looked like. Or the layout of my kindergarten classroom, but nothing else. Or the terror I felt getting on the Haunted Mansion in Disney World, but none of the good parts!

But first grade is there, solid and concrete. I remember the cubbies in my school, laid out in a nook just before entering the classroom. The hopping challenge to raise money for a cancer charity. The bully stealing stuff from my backpack. My teacher, warm, cheerful and sharing a name with an applesauce brand. The hallway at the end of the school, with us as the youngest kids there. It’s the school that shows up in my dreams. The memories are still tinged with that haze of childhood recollection, but it’s the point where the child I was then seems to be the same person as the adult I am now.

So I wonder what my son’s memories will be of these days, of this year. Will he remember his teacher fondly? Will he make friends now that carry through elementary school? Will the books he read now become favorites or soon forgotten? Will this Halloween, this Christmas, this spring leave an impression or just blend in to the grand changing of the seasons? Will all those lazy afternoons at the park be stored away into nostalgia?

At the same time, we get even less information than ever before. The first grade teachers aren’t catering to the nerves of parents the way the kindergarten teachers were. He offers tiny bits of his day at best, preferring to talk about video games or fantastic situations from his imagination. We’re left guessing at what’s going on when we aren’t there, squinting to fill in the blanks.

But that’s what being a parent is, isn’t it? Giving up your all-encompassing knowledge of their life over to them, bit by bit. Knowing that your child more and more has their own life, whether they choose to share with you or not. Trusting them that they will come to you when they truly need to.

Looking back at my first-grade self, I think the main thing I’d remind her is that she is so deeply loved. And that’s what I try to show my son every day as well, in word and deed.

For more personal stories of parenting, follow us on Facebook!