Lessons from caregiving
I would say I have realized I was acting like a “grown up”, instead of “feeling a grown up”.
When I was eight, my life flipped upside down. My mom worked out of town, my dad stayed home, but didn’t do much. He used to be a laborer, but for all his excuses, he stopped doing that. So, I was stuck babysitting my baby sister because Dad just couldn’t handle bedtime. He’d get frustrated and pass her off to me or my older siblings. Sometimes, my playtime would be interrupted with babysitting duties. We also helped out in feeding her and changing her diapers. We didn’t really have a choice—we were the caregivers whether we wanted to be or not.
In a cloth-carrier, I danced my younger sister to sleep. That time, I did all my best to rock my baby sister to sleep in a sling we called “aban”, singing her lullabies. When I ran out of songs, I made up my own tunes with repetitive words. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that all this caregiving was actually teaching me about responsibility and what it means to be an adult. Even though I was just a kid, taking care of my sister made me grow up in ways I didn’t even know were happening.
Per-nal 
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