Sure, we've lost pets, lost toys, etc., and there have been the normal amoutn of childish meltdowns over the years. But my 11 year old is having his first bout with true "saddness". It may sound like no big deal, but his guitar instructor of 4 years is moving out of town, and I can tell my son is borderline crushed. Sure, he'll get over it....he absolutely loves the guitar, and the studio has plenty of cool and capable instructors. But it just about tore me up to see his face, and hear his voice crack when he told me the news. Oh well, I guess this will sort of prepare him for the evil and heartless treatment he will receive from middle-school girls in the near future.
One of the things I'm worried about as a parent is being able to deal with these things. Hucklebaby is now 7 years old and soon will come the time where she is devastated by something that doesn't seem important to me. But I hope I'm able to remember myself at her age and how things that seem little now really did feel like the end of my world at the time. The best we can hope for is to comfort them and help them see, on the other side of their grief, that there are lessons to be learned and that better things are still to come. I think a major mistake many parents make is minimizing their child's feelings. And, unfortunately, I can see myself doing that someday and hope like hell I see it before it happens and handle it the right way. Especially when they're teenagers. Anyone see Dan in Real Life? I think the girl actress did a great job with her "YOU'RE A MURDERER OF LOVE!!!" line in that movie. A 14-year-old girl really truly believes what they're saying at that moment in time. It's something I hope to keep in mind. No matter how ridiculous it seems to me when it happens. My only advantage is that I fell in love with my wife when we were 16 years old. So hopefully the dating issues will be easier for me to understand. Movies and TV like to have the adults use the "you're too young to know what love is" line. IMO, though, hormones are raging so out of control in teenagers that adults forget how strong every emotion is at that age. I keep waiting for the kid to respond "No, you're too old to know what love is!" End of ramble. Good luck with your son.
Huck, that is anything BUT a ramble, and actually, now that I think about it, your comments are at the root of what made me post this little story. My very first instinct was to say "oh, that's no big deal, you'll get another teacher". But after a few minutes, I had to catch myself, because I also made a promise to myself that I would always try to balance reality with my kids' perspective on things. In his world, where Wednesday guitar lessons are one of the highlights of his week, this event is tremendously major. Now that he's getting older, he'll start having more of these "events" which will affect how he feels, how he performs in school, in sports, etc. Being a parent to my two boys has been more fun than I can ever imagine, and I absolutely love watching grow into fun, active and socially well-adjusted pre-teens. But I feel a little sad myself, knowing they are very close to getting into that age where they don't share everything with Ol' Dad, and carry a lot of emotional turmoil around inside of them.
Honestly I think part of the problems here is that I hear about an 11 year old going through his first bout of sadness. How in the hell can you make it to 11 and this be the first bout? I blame the nanny cakes society these days. You now don't keep score in youth sports because someone might get their feelings hurt if they lose, etc. Hell I recall when I was in 6 year old soccer we won our city championship and went to Dallas to play in the state tournament. We made the finals and got freaking beat down hard. I was totally crushed by the loss and moped about for several weeks. This was great for me and one of the best things to happen to me early in life. I had to learn to deal with emotional distress, I had to learn to lose gracefully, I had to learn to get over it, and most importantly I learned I had to get back out there and bust my *** to get better so as not to get donkey punched the next year. It was awesome. These days it seems kids are so sheltered from anything that would hurt their feelings that they do not know how to cope with these things when they happen. Anyway, not really sure how any of this relates to this situation, but this is just something I have noticed. I know this is a horrible thing to see a child upset. truly it is awful. I hope he gets over it soon, but I think this will be a good thing to prepare him for life. As most of us know it is full of disappointments, etc. I do think we need to put kids in siutations early in life to deal with these things which was my real point above.
007.......I think you missed my point....or maybe I did a poor job of presenting it.....although I did preface the entire post by saying he had experience normal childhood sadness, and that this current episode is what I considered to be the first "true" sadness. Of course he's been "sad" before. Hell, his basketball team lost EVERY freaking game last year, and he had a breakdown after the last loss (a one point game where he missed the potential buzzer beater). He's been the hero and he's been the goat in any number of competitive baseball games......directly involved in causing his team to win, and causing it to lose as well. But in each of those cases, I could honestly tell him "hey, don't let it get you down, you'll get over it, that's the way it goes, blah blah blah." BTW --- they DO keep score in youth sports these days. Maybe not in 5-6 year olds, but other than that, they dang sure do. But this time, it struck me in a much different manner. He truly senses "losing" a friend and someone he looks up to. Fortunately, he hasn't had to deal with ultimate "loss" yet in the form of a close family member or friend dying. Sure, we had a cat die, and a pet lizard, and some of his friends have moved out of town over the years, but he was younger, cried it out and went on. I just felt compelled to post about this, because I get the feeling that somewhere in the not too recent past, my kid began to "grow up", and I missed it. It wasn't until this little discussion about the guitar lessons that I realized he had fostered a relationship with this guy, and he was sad that it was going to end. He'll get over it. Not a doubt in my mind. The point of my post was more of an observation than anything.....maybe even an attempt to talk to myself, and reminding myself (as Huck pointed out) to try and keep an open mind as to their perspective of the world.
Texas007, being a bad sport and "sadness" are not the same thing. losing a game is not the same as experiencing a "loss" plenty of kids, ages 5 & 6 even, are playing highly competitive sports and take it very seriously, even today in our "everyone's a winner" teaching. so please, save the radio psychology talk for someone else who isn't a parent.
When your little ones are sad, you just know they'll get over it. And they do. When your adult children are sad, you are worried that they won't get over it. This is, I think, a much heavier burden. Now I'm depressed.
I think our son was about 20 when his grandmother died. At the time he was your typical college kid, muy macho and very conscious of the image he was trying to project. We came home from the hospital after she passed and he was being unusually quiet. I asked him if he was OK and, I'll never forget this, he kind of blurted out "I'm so sad" and just started bawling. He wasn't the only one. We hugged each other and didn't say anything else. A little later, he was back to being his butthead self and all was normal again in our little corner of the universe.
My thoughts here: I have a young child who has had to bear some emotional burdens that are beyond her years. What we have found is that if you acknowledge the hurt and provide encouragement/support...she will be able to think it through on her own and get over it a lot easier than if you leave her hanging in the wind with her feelings. Each child is different but mine is very sensitive and I try to get her beyond the reactive stage into proactive thinking. Support and encouragement go a lot farther for her. With kids, I have found that what might not be a big deal for us could be their entire world. There have been times when I have had to agree that it sucked and try to find a way to see that there will eventually be something good waiting for her on the other side of that feeling and remind her to keep looking forward to it. And we have also known when we needed an outside source to give us a hand.
The parent can't always provide a safe and happy outside world. What the parent can provide is the safe and stable haven that is always there when disaster happens in the outside world. The parent needs to stay attuned to and share the child's emotional experiences while at the same time demonstrating that the emotion does not overwhelm you. The child needs to learn that he can venture out into the world and experience loss or anxiety and endure and eventually return to normal. That's learning to be resilient and resilience will last him a life time.
