It’s Not You, It’s Me
Posted By Daisy on December 8, 2010
No matter how much we protest to appreciate our kids’ uniqueness and celebrate their individuality, I think all of us sometimes struggle with separating our own self-image from our image of our offspring. The more we find our children participating in social settings, the harder it gets. I’ve gotta stomp on my urge to “explain” my guy to onlookers. Sometimes it is silly stuff: ”Umm…when he says he brushes his teeth ‘now and then’ he means both in the morning (now) and the evening (then)….not, you know, sporadically.” This week it was a little harder, and I don’t know if I’ve quite got to the bottom of what buttons of mine got pushed. Maybe some of you can help.
Our preschool teacher took pains yesterday to let us know our darling angel boy REFUSED to practice singing “Feliz Navidad” with the rest of the class. Now, when the preschool told me my guy wasn’t drawing circles, my internal reaction was “Pffft….he just doesn’t feel like making circles. You people are clearly cramping his style. Whatevs.” But this time — this was different. Maybe it was the image of him separated from his peers, perhaps embarrassed publicly? I know my son pretty well and I am betting he did not particularly care or feel shamed by sitting apart from the singing circle. It’s me that would be flushed with a burning embarrassment that would haunt me into adulthood by something like that. Was it that I thought this meant he doesn’t like people who speak Spanish? Or, more to the point, that everyone else might THINK he doesn’t like Spanish? Again, that is sooo not my kid it’s laughable. He wants to know the Russian and Spanish and Vietnamese and Ancient Greek words for everything — it’s exhausting, really. So why, WHY would he not sing? What did I do wrong? Should I have let him wear his preferred pair of socks that morning — would that have made all the difference?
One day he’ll be old enough to read this blog, and I hope that he does. Here’s my message to you sweetie. Your mom is the neurotic one, not you. I’ll do my best to remember that next time. You just go on being you.
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When my youngest daughter was in preschool we had all kinds of issues. I was getting calls daily from her teacher telling me she wasn’t participating… in anything. She wouldn’t sing, she wouldn’t listen to stories, she wouldn’t play with the other kids. Yes, I panicked. But… two years later my kids is just fine thank you. And she is still stubborn as a mule… she won’t do what she doesn’t want to do. She has learned that she HAS to participate in class, but she is a free spirit… so what? Every child is different. Unfortunately, educators like to put kids in a one-size-fits-all mold.
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Gotta say, maybe I spent my kids’ formative years in Montessori and so I’m now permanently warped, but I agree with you wholeheartedly about separating “me” from “them”….so if he wasn’t in the mood to shake a maraca and sing that (inane) song, so be it!
But I feel that way about a lot of things — my feeling is, hey, I’ve been through 3rd grade/6th grade/ballet class/basketball practice….if you don’t want to do it, that’s between you and your teacher or whomever. (The caveat being that if you told me you couldn’t live without ballet and I paid for the year, well then — get your blooming dance shoes on….).
The challenge is, of course, to remember, *it’s not about me.* Therapy bills all over the planet would shrink!
AML
alyson: common sense, dancing recently posted..LIteracy
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I still remember at age 65 years being forced to sing (out loud) by a nun (maybe relevant, maybe not) in front of the class at a very young age ( certainly not preschool (I didn’t even go to kindergarten)…what I do remember is feeling very shy, as I was, and embarrassed for myself and the others who had to witness my uncomfortableness. The song had something to do with wishing I could be a gadabout and live among the butterflies. I didn’t know what gadabout meant then or now, but it had to be better than what I was feeling at that moment. Somethings are easier to just go along with (and suffer the embarrassment) or refuse to do and deal with the disappointment of others. Things that require more fortitude…of the go f… yourself variety…not something a very, very young child (or parent) should not concern themselves with … will sort itself out.
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