I could see the pain on his face when I looked over at him. It wasn’t the look of physical pain, worse, it was emotional pain, heartache. I am so much better at dealing with the bumps and bruises. I can wield a tube of Neosporin and apply a Spongebob band-aid with the best of them. It’s the emotional CPR that makes me get all weak and causes feelings of inadequacy.
The problem with helping your children deal with a broken heart is that your own heart is so inextricably tethered to theirs that you have no capacity to offer objective advice- at least this is my struggle.
I managed to duck out of a conversation with a particularly chatty parent and made my way over to him. His eyes were cast to the ground, his face contorted as he worked hard to dam the tears. Like every other red blooded male, no tears = bravery. I took him by his tense hand and slowly and inconspicuously, pulled him out of the throngs of loud children donning silly hats- you see, today was silly hat day at school. I knelt in from of him, craning my head to the left until it wouldn’t bend any further in an effort to make eye contact with him. I asked “sunshine, where is your hat?” My boys’ response “the trash- my friends laughed at it.” My heart shattered. Just the day before we had spent our afternoon around the craft table making silly hats- after all, the note home said “children are encouraged to make a silly hat” and this is what we did. As we sat before mounds of construction paper, glue, googly eyes and other crafty sort of items, it had been my girl who looked to me for guidance- but not my boy. He had already conceptualized the design and was already engaged in the activity. His nimble fingers quickly set about the task of implementing the creation. Within 20 minutes, he was sporting the most adorable, goofy headdress that fit his beautiful head perfectly. He wore it for the remainder of the day, a grin plastered on his face, clearly proud of his creation. But now, he stood before me, unable to make eye contact for fear of the single tear that had managed to escape would be noticed, and his cleverly crafted hat was now in the garbage.
I tried to refrain from freaking out and saying loudly and proudly “that hat is perfect, you should be wearing it!” which would have made matters worse. So, I said “son, please get your hat out of the garbage can.” He obediently took what had to feel like a 2 mile walk over to that over sized black barrel that sat in the midst of the school yard. He quickly extracted the hat and returned holding it as far away from him as his arm would allow. He wanted nothing to do with it. I thanked him, my heart breaking even more, my mind searching for what to say next – “son, you made this hat, from your own ideas, your own coloring, cutting and gluing, your hat does not look like any one’s, it is original, and I love it.” As I said this, I glanced around and realized that the other children were wearing silly hats that their parents had bought for the occasion. Now, I don’t fault parents for raiding the $1 bin at Target for silly hat day, we’re all busy, I just hate that in his mind and the minds of the other children, a store bought hat had some how diminished the value of his handiwork.
He made no verbal or non verbal response to my acknowledgement of what his hat meant to me. “Son, you do not have to wear this hat if you don’t want to, but because you made it, I’d like to wear it, is that ok?” as I placed it on my head, using my pony tail to hold it in place. I detected a slight upturn of one corner of his pouting lips as he nodded a ‘yes’. I hugged him, kissed him and reminded him how much I love him, and off he went, to line up with all of the other 1st graders.
I left the school grounds with a burning lump in my throat as I called my husband.
I shared the morning events with him, which caused him to move into his stealth, “I am man, here me roar and what I do best if fix things” mode. Before we hung up, he had located a silly hat for my boy. He dropped in at school, pulled our boy out of class to present the winning alternate, my boy was delighted, and all was well.
But was it really? Was this the right way to handle this? I continue to struggle with some questions that have played through my mind, afterall, I am a mother, self torture is what we do.
1. Should I have proudly pulled the hat from the garbage, placed it confidently atop his blond head and stated, “you made this, be proud of it and wear it.” Urging him to take pride in being different and to be proud of his handmade hat?
2. Did I communicate to him the need to conform? If you look different, then we will go out of our way to adjust the situation so that you look like everyone else?
3. Did I underscore a lesson that store bought is better? Killing creativity!
4. At what point do we as parents stand back and allow our children to suffer hurt feelings. After all, there are valuable lessons to be learned from coping with these painful growing experiences.
5. Were we selfish in wanting to ease our own suffering that we robbed our boy of an opportunity to learn and grow?
So I am asking you, what would you have done?
Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 11:49PM 
