The best and worst parts of being a parent is feeling your child’s emotional highs and lows.
Little children carry big emotions that they often do not yet have the life experience to process.
When T has a super high, excited or proud moment, we all celebrate together. On the flip side, we’re in the trenches of the lows with him.
Recently, we received a message from T’s Child and Youth Worker that the friend that he sits with on the school bus told T he doesn’t like him.
T then told his CYW this made him very sad.
The CYW explained to T the kid was upset about something else – T later told me the kid had lost his shoes – and he didn’t mean what he said.
I received this message while I was on a work call and it made me very sad.
I often think about friendships for T, as I read on private support groups about kids with T’s prognosis having challenges with maintaining friendships.
So as T’s parent, I am even more sensitive to these kind of incidents – even if in this instance, it wasn’t related to anything T did.
For me, it’s important to let kids experience the wide spectrum of emotions.
The worst thing I could do as T’s parent is to shield him from experiencing negative emotions like sadness, anger or frustration.
We work hard to give T the tools to process and verbalize his emotions, including encouraging him to talk to us or a grown up.
In the recent incident, T told the bus driver who then alerted his CYW. So while it sucked that T experienced this, we were glad he told a grown up. That is a sign of maturity, I think.
A few days later, his CYW shared even more devastating news. The classmate that T had grown close with and played with at school was leaving for a different school.
The CYW wanted to give us a heads up because she felt that this would be a huge loss for T.
So we strategized. The CYW told T about it a few days beforehand and she arranged a proper goodbye for the two boys.
The kid’s last day at T’s school was this past Tuesday. I asked that evening about his classmate. T explained he was going to a different school.
I asked T how he felt about it. He said he felt sad. And that was a perfectly normal and healthy response.
School friends will come and go – and hopefully some will also be long lasting – and I remind myself we’ll get through these moments with T together.
That night, as I was lying down with T during bedtime after stories, he snuggled up very closely to me and wrapped my arm around his chest. He fell asleep tightly in my arms.
The hardest part of being a parent is seeing our children go through this kind of pain. Friendship is so important to kids.
Thank you, Diane. And agreed. The emotional journey your child goes through is often the hardest when it’s sadness and anger. But we get through them and hopefully continue to do so!
Beautiful story of love, inspiration and courage. Feeling, expressing and dealing with real life situations are very important for our both kids and adults to learn, adapt and cope. Having supportive families makes a big difference . Happy weekend my friend. It’s chill day at home for us here. Just finished family brunch of eggs and tocino. Life is good.
Thank you! I know that life for T will be filled with the good and the bad. So I try not to fear the negative moments but rather think about how I best prepare him to face them.
Your chilled day sounds fantastic. I have not had tosino (nor longonisa) in so long. They go so well with garlic fried rice. And cold Del Monte pineapple juice! I’m clearly craving a Filipino brunch here. 🙂
Enjoy that lovely day with your family!
When it rains it pours. This pandemic has been hard enough on kids, and now T has to deal with one of his friends moving away. That sucks. But better to feel sad than mad. And good that he’s talking about his feelings. Hope you have a wonderful Easter long weekend. It’s a little chilly today, but at least the sun is shining.
Thank you, L. The pandemic has been very hard for youth and kids.
It looks like we can still enjoy the parks? The lockdown thing is so confusing. 🤣 Today and tomorrow are chilly but Sunday is 14 and sunny! So hope you get to enjoy your time up at the cabin.
Taking my mom for her vaccine today! 🙌🙌🙌 Take care.
That’s awesome!! Glad to hear that your mom is getting her vaccine today. And yes, looks like parks are still open for day-use!! No overnight camping though, which I am not too pleased about. We had three camping trips booked for April, which have now all been cancelled. We managed to reschedule one of them for May, but worry about what the bug situation is going to be like. Oh well, it’s the way she goes. I imagine you’re pretty thrilled to hear that schools are remaining open. For now we’re just going to focus on enjoying the long weekend. We’re just about to head up to the cabin. Take care.
Yes, very thrilled schools are open still. 🤣
I’m sorry about the April cancellations but glad you got some in May.
Enjoy the cabin weekend!