Day 4,028 —I See you Buddy—

 

I got up late and ran with my vest again. It felt a little lighter today—not a huge amount, but three days of running with it in a row had some effect. I was still thinking about something that happened this week with my son.          

I was at daycare picking him up, and he was on the top of the slide, but when he saw me, he turned to go down the ladder. I told him to go down the slide, so he turned to the slide and went down it as fast as he could. At the bottom of the slide, another young kid had decided to try to climb up it, and my two-year-old ran into her. 

I could tell he was upset that she had jumped to climb up the slide because he tried to push her out of the way at the bottom. She wasn’t there when he had started, and I had told him to go for it, so I didn’t think he had done anything wrong, but one of the people at the daycare said something suggesting he should watch where he was going. With that comment, his little face became so sad that it looked like he might start crying. 

I told him he didn’t do anything wrong, but his feelings were already hurt. I thought about all the times that I had been admonished for doing something I knew was right. It was usually something that multiple people had told me to do, but hearing an adult tell me I was wrong hurt my feelings on so many levels. I am fine with people telling me I am wrong when I am wrong, or if there is a chance I could be wrong, but when I am following a specific direction from someone else and to be told that I’m wrong makes me feel so thoroughly misunderstood, or maybe that I cannot do anything right. 

I had told him to go down the stairs after he wanted to take the ladder. I told him to go down the slide because I wanted him to have fun, and I didn’t want to interrupt his playtime, but now he had been told he was wrong twice, and it destroyed him. He clung to me for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t want me to leave his side, but when I told his mom about it during dinner, I could see his face light up and change. 

The book I am reading right now argues that young boys are more sensitive than young girls, which I don’t know if I agree with, but everyone is sensitive, especially when they are corrected when they’re trying to do the right thing. The message we send young boys is often, “man-up,” or “toughen up,” or “I will give you something to cry about,” but we normally don’t tell young girls the same thing. Instead, most of us value young girls emotions, but young boys are shamed for having emotions.