When someone breaks your baby’s heart
Mar 3rd, 2008 by Dani
Sorry people, I’m off on one of my non-food related rambles again. Bear with me please.
My brain is still processing the shattering events that ruptured yesterday’s Kindergarten picnic. Son and Heir has a new best friend. Let’s call her A. Only a few weeks into term and they are inseparable.
Last year, A attended the 3 year old kinder program but Son and Heir did not. The picnic yesterday included families from both 3 year old and both 4 year old groups that attend the kinder. A saw some of her friends from last year who are not in the same group this year. So the 3 girls began to play together and Son and Heir joined in . All was rosy for a short period when suddenly, Son and Heir let out a great masculine roar of pleasure. That was too much testosterone for A’s friends. They banished Son and Heir from their presence with all the oestrogen fueled derision their 4 year old bodies could muster.
Well he struggled manfully to take the onslaught of female scorn with a cry of “that’s not fair” but it was all too much. His beautiful little face crumpled and he ran towards the Bread Winner and I crying as his heart shattered into trillions of tiny little pieces. He cried and sobbed for nigh on twenty minutes. My soul was torn, my heart was breaking. All the kisses and cuddles in the world couldn’t help. After a full three quarters of an hour, lunch, some attention from another girlfriend E, many cuddles and much talk about how he felt and he was ready to deal with the situation. He suddenly stood up with a determined face and announced “I’m going to talk to A”.
All was well in his world again. A had been sitting by herself feeling horribly torn between her new friends and her old friends so she was more than happy to see him approach. Poor girl, so much to process when you’re only four.
The whole experience was quite shattering for both Son and Heir and for me. He is totally over it now but I’m not. Kinder is the first time he has had the opportunity to develop friendships without being by my side. It’s really hit home that next year he will be at school, away from me for more of the week than he is with me. I’m not ready for that and I’m not going to be ready for it next year. He is such a gentle, sensitive soul. I can’t bear the thought of people crushing his spirit without my being there to pick up the pieces. I know I need to have faith in him and faith in the tools I have tried to impart to him to develop an emotionally intelligent person but it’s SCARY.
How can I do a good job of developing an emotionally intelligent person when I really wanted to grab those two little girls and call them nasty names? How does one go about imparting skills that one does not possess? I suppose I can teach kids to swim butterfly despite not being very good at it myself but that’s just technique. Emotional technique is so much harder to teach, particularly when all my own emotions are invested in my students.
This parenting gig comes with more responsibility, fear and heartbreak than I ever could have imagined.
Thanks for listening, I’ll scuttle off back to the kitchen now…
Oh Dani
Is it any comfort for you to know that it will happen again, and that he will probably find a way of accepting it and not being heartbroken?
A good friend of ours has a song “It’s not gonna be fair, but it’s goin’ to be ok…” Sing to whatever tune you chose. Funnily enough it does help them.
The “you’re (not) my friend” thing seems to happen over and over to my boys when they are friends with girls, and it used to upset them. Now it puzzles them but they kind of accept it (sadly) and go off to play with someone else. And still play with the girl when she changes her mind and returns days later.
I have to breath deeply b/c it seems SO freaking cruel. But the boys do seem to process or accept it these days. Sometimes 6yo T says that he is sad. Like today, his new(ish) good friend E gave him a note in the library to say that she wasn’t going to play with him anymore b/c she has agreed to play with her girlfriend R from now on. He said he was sad b/c he liked playing with her and now he will be alone. But he says he doesn’t mind playing on his own. (Insert even more tears from his mother…)
I wish with all my heart that my beautiful boys didn’t have to go through this, but I think they will be ok.
xxx
btw, can you imagine how much I wanted to see that library note? A 6yo can’t write, FFS. I asked him and he said he left it in the library, but that I wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway. What is with that? Do the Year 6’s conduct how-to-dump-your-friends classes for Year 1’s behind the toilet blocks?
This is the reason that I’m spending 5+ hours a week volunteering to help in their classroom; so I can find out what really goes on *cackle*. Whoops, better put my smiley face back on
Oh poor T. 6 is far too young to be writing Dear John letters. Gosh girl’s are scary creatures with their psychological weapons. It think this behaviour is worse than it was when I was young though. It just didn’t happen that much in my primary school. Perhaps is the sexualisation of children that exacerbates it? I must admit I spend so much time at the kinder for the same reasons. I need to know what goes on!
I know it will happen again and again and it will get easier for him to bear but I don’t relish that thought. It’s like each time a little part of his beautiful soul shuts down and hardens. I was impressed with the way he (slowly) processed it all. It’s his sensitivity and gentle spirit that so sets him apart from other boys and I hate seeing hat part of him attacked.
Urgh, I never thought I’d be such a cotton wool Mum.