Over the Easter holiday we spent time with Boy Toy’s family. There was the annual Easter Egg hunt where Spotty Chop…never does very well. He doesn’t have the drive to win that his other cousins have. Don’t get me wrong, he loves to win. But not as much as these guys do. After the hunt…well towards the end of the hunt when everyone got more eggs than he did we found Spotty alone and sad in a room by himself. When we asked him why he didn’t finish the egg hunt he said “ because I’m no good at it. I’m not as good as my cousins at anything. They beat me in EVERYTHING”. He was so distressed. We explained that he was right these guys seemed to be better at finding eggs, and in some sports than he was, We said that this wasn’t about who got the most eggs, but about having fun (which went over like a lead balloon.) We asked if he wanted to learn to play baseball and hockey, he said no, he didn’t want to play either of those and that he liked soccer and swimming. We reminded him that he was a better reader and that everyone was really good at something and everyone was bad at something. He felt that he sucked at everything. We talked and snuggled for awhile and he seemed to feel better. He even tried hitting a few balls and did a great job, he shocked the hell out of me that he could hit a pitched ball (whiffle). I think he surprised himself too.
Midway through this conversation I was almost overcome with grief in the fact that I couldn’t fix this. No one was being mean, nothing was unfair. It was just life and sometimes things don’t go your way. And I realized that I was going to have to get into the ring with this situation probably for the rest of my life.
Sometimes parenting sucks.
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