When Your Think Your Kids are Sad, the Hardest Part is Doing Nothing.

Hey friends:

I've talked about my kids on this blog before, including my younger son and the way he struggles with 9th grade math like his mother did, and how he consistently reminds me of my 14 year-old self.

This year, my husband and I decided to send the little guy (who is actually now taller than me) to a high school other than the high school that my son's friends attend.

We knew it was the right thing to do.  We are still confident of that. . . you know, objectively speaking.

But those first couple of months were an adjustment for everyone.

I thought I was prepared for the first days of the new school.  I mean, it's high school.  He has an older brother.  I've done this before.  I'm a rational adult. . .

But I fumbled the ball. . . more than once.

Especially those first few days.  When I picked up my son after school, I was immediately cross-examining him (shocker) on what he did that day, how his classes were, who he met, did he feel safe, did he like his teachers.

And the dreaded lunch room.  Yeah, I went there.

On day 1, my son mumbled to me that he sat by himself at lunch.  (I just felt a lump in my throat typing that -- even all of these months later.)

On day 2, I asked again (even more anxiously, I'm sure) about lunch.  Same answer.  :-(  But he wasn't mumbling it, he just told me kind of matter-of-factly.

On day 3, same question.  Same answer, and then he started texting some friends.

By day 4, my brain was ready to flip a table.  It was telling me -- screaming at me actually -- that it was no longer acceptable for this child to sit by himself at lunch and WE HAD TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Maybe I could connect with the guidance counselor at the school?  Do I know any of the parents of other students, so that I can ask them to ask their kid to sit with my son at lunch?

I was in full control-freak mode.

So, with a racing heartbeat and my brain telling me that we were going to die, I cautiously inched along in the parent pick-up car line on day 4.  I could see my son waiting at the designated exit as I rolled closer to him.

And then he opens the back passenger side door, tosses his backpack in the back and jumps in to the passenger seat next to me.

"How was your day, buddy?"  I say, with the most contrived fake cheerfulness you've ever heard in your life.

"Fine," he replied.  Just like that, "fine."  And then he resumes a conversation on his phone.

He did seem fine.  That was true enough.

But I was not fine.

"What did you do at lunch?"

"The same thing I did yesterday, Mom."

I wanted to keep it cool, my friends, I really did.  I could have just turned on a podcast, sat in the silence of the drive and let him do his thing.  If there was a problem, he would eventually bring it to me (he usually did.)

But I just could NOT do NOTHING.

Instead, I had this out-of-body experience where I watched myself raised my voice and exclaim "You cannot just sit by yourself at lunch for the whole year!"

I think he even flinched a little bit.  I was kind of loud.  I'm not proud of myself.

But my baby has wisdom in that beautiful brain of his.  Sometimes, the wisdom hides underneath the urgent need for approval (also inherited from his mother), but it's there.

And he calmly looked at me and said, "Why not?"

"Oh crap," my brain hissed.  "He's onto us.  We definitely did not expect that."

And my son was onto something, friends.  Why was it such a problem if he sat by himself at lunch?

It wasn't really a problem for him.  On one of the days, he actually mentioned that he liked having the quiet time to himself.

It was a problem for me, though.

Here's the thing.  I'm a mom with a human brain.  Just like you.

The urge to protect my child is so hard to resist. . . even when I know that my actions are creating a result that is not really that helpful to either of us.

And if I'm being brutally honest with you, the truth is that I want the other humans, all of them, to treat my children well -- in a way that I believe will "make" them happy.  Because if my children are happy, than I'm allowed to feel like I did an okay job as their mother, and then that will "make" me happy.

That's all we're ever really going for -- a feeling.  We don't even need it to make sense in the moment.

We'd just like some happiness, some peace, maybe a side of external validation on that plate of emotions that gets shoved in our faces every day.

I was trying to get to a feeling on day 4 of school in the pickup line, and I was expecting my son to deliver happiness to me by doing what I imagined would "make" him  (and, when I say "him," I really mean me) happy.

I could have simply chosen to believe a thought that would make me happy, but -- no -- I declined that invitation on day 4 of school.

Instead, I was apparently more than willing to indulge all of my control-freakish habits to engineer a large serving of external approval during the first four days of school.

But when he asked me "why not?", I had to admit that I was stumped. . . until I realized that I was just reacting to my own feelings, which were created by my own thoughts.  My son sitting alone at lunch is a totally neutral circumstance. . . until I have a thought about it.

That's it.  I raised my voice and voiced my demand because I had a feeling, that was generated by a thought.  Instead of allowing that feeling to just be there, I reacted.

The thought I had -- this kid cannot sit by himself all year -- seems appropriate on the surface, but it was more about me than him and, well, my son apparently doesn't think what he's doing at lunch is a big deal.

So now it's out there.  I have a human brain.  Despite my best efforts to manage the thoughts in that brain, I frequently screw it up.  I drop the ball.  #bad-mom

Managing our thoughts around the subject of our children is some real work, my friends.  And our brains are very, very sneaky with the thoughts it will offer up regarding those little (or not so little) humans.

And when it does offer up those thoughts, we have to do the hardest thing of all. . . NOTHING.

Just a big fat nothing at all.  No intervention, no fixing.

That is some real f*#!ing work.

When your kids are mad or sad -- and sometimes even when they're not -- it is just so hard to let go and do nothing.

But they are worth doing the hard things, and so are we.

Talk to you soon, my friends.