And it Begins...

Well, the drama continues. My son had a rough day at school today, and was in tears at pick up time because "everyone expects me to do everything and I can't because of my cast". He feels ganged up on and that people are ignoring this limitation that he temporarily has.

I tried to comfort him with the fact that overall he is so conscientious and such a hard worker that people are used to being demanding of him, and may forget, even though it's staring them in the face, that he has a temporary disability.

It is so hard to watch him suffer, and feel him shutting me out. Is this tweendom beginning? He does this thing where he willfully obscures a subject. It's most vexing. He'll say he's hungry and not hungry and have a hangdog look about him. It's like he wants help but he doesn't. Hey, that definitely sounds like tweendom!

Is there a section in the bookstore for tweens in casts? Cause I could use a few pointers, no pun intended.

What Goes Around Comes Around

So my last blog post was kind of prescient. My son, after being told repeatedly in the same day, not to wear his roller blades in the house or on the front step, fell and broke his elbow when he slipped on the step.

He was so upset and clearly in pain, so off to urgent care we went. They took x-rays, but didn't see a break. Sigh of relief. The next day, the urgent care people called and said, whoops, looks like there's evidence of a fracture after all, please come in for a splint and then get ready to see an orthopedist about a cast.

So my son and I went and got him a kelly green cast that he has decided he does NOT want people to sign.

What a painful way to learn a lesson. He is learning to adapt to life with one functioning arm and hand. I hope it adds to his growth, and not his frustration. This is a learning opportunity for all of us. We need more patience with our little patient. This will be our challenge.

Letting Go of Control

The older my kids get, the more independent they get. This is normal and developmentally appropriate and everything, but it doesn't address how hard it is to let your kids go and do things and think thoughts that are not influenced strongly by YOU, the all-knowing (ha!) parent.

Learning to trust your tween--is there a book out there with that title? If there isn't, there should be. My children are both growing up, natch, and my son is now 11. Which makes him a tween. He is not a typical kid by many measurements, but he is behaving like a tween when he says he'll clean up his room "in a minute" which means NEVER, and "Hang on" means wait fifteen more minutes than you'd intended to.

You can't live your child's life for you, but nobody told me how hard it would be to let go, or let looser, and see your children challenged and struggling. In Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet", he says you have to let your kids out into the world, they are "yours and not yours". Of course he said this in beautifully poetic language which I am too lazy to look up right now.

But the point remains: we have to learn to trust our children to make good decisions, and when they don't, to allow them to fail, within reasonable limits.

There is no how-to manual for dealing with letting go in your heart and your head.