You have activated a Bronze WP Symposium plugin, but you have not entered your Activation Code. You can get your Activation Code on the Membership page on the WP Symposium website.
RSS Feed

Posts Tagged ‘lessons’

  1. A Little Girl With BIG Feelings

    May 7, 2012 by Laura

    I have a con­fes­sion.  Because my kids are both under the age of 4 I don’t know whole lot about how their dad being gone makes them feel.  Are they sad when he goes? Do they miss him? Does my 1 year old even think dad is sup­posed to be around more often? When daddy misses the lit­tle things the kids do I am sad for him that he wasn’t there to expe­ri­ence it, but since my kids never say it (one of them can’t actu­ally– he grunts and points, but that is about it) I never really think about them feel­ing hurt or dis­ap­pointed or con­fused by it.  In my defense they never say any­thing or do any­thing in par­tic­u­lar to make me think that they notice too much, and I think we do a good job of call­ing and mak­ing my hus­band feel included when I think it really counts.  They are young, so I just fig­ure that they will show me if they are stressed by act­ing out or some­thing else as described {here}.  I have also been telling myself that MY being there is always enough.

    This week­end my daugh­ter showed me that even after being a Plane Jane for the past 5 years and doing it with kids for nearly 4 of them, I still have a lot to learn.

    Yes­ter­day my daugh­ter (who is the most cau­tious per­son on earth) decided she wanted to go up in a tree in our back­yard. So I hoisted her up in her lit­tle hand-me-down dress and funny suede boots (that she LOVES) to her lit­tle perch.  The sun was shin­ing directly behind her and she looked absolutely angelic.

    It was a trans­for­ma­tive moment for her.  She could see over the fence into the neighbor’s yard and she started telling me about every­thing she could see that I couldn’t.   She called down to me and said, “Mommy, where is daddy I want to show him!” I told her he was on an air­plane (just boarded in New York) “But Mommy call him!  I want to tell him!” (I tried to call even though I knew he was climb­ing to 30,000 feet and there was no way he would answer ) I couldn’t bear to not try. “Sorry love, he is not answer­ing” “But Mom try and Face­Time him! Show him I’m up in the tree!”

    I could tell that the only per­son in the world she wanted to see her awk­ward lit­tle body 4 feet off the ground in that tree was her daddy– and he wasn’t there.

    He couldn’t tell her how proud he was, or how brave she was or ask her to tell him about the trees and flow­ers and birds she could see up there.  I real­ized in that moment that I am not enough some­times, and maybe I’m not sup­posed to be. Daddy not being there in the moments that my kids deem impor­tant, really can dis­ap­point them. She looked down at me and asked me “why can’t daddy see me?” and I could see in her lit­tle brown eyes adult-like dis­ap­point­ment.  It was a true moment of clar­ity, guilt (always the guilt) but most of all a real­iza­tion that she can be adult-like dis­ap­pointed, which is a really big thing to feel at the young age of 3 and a half.

    She had a sig­nif­i­cant event occur and it was meant for her and her daddy and she could feel it, and it was important.

    As much as I want to be brave and strong and resilient and pass that on to my kids, I won­der if part of that includes allow­ing them to go through the process of dis­ap­point­ment, or sad­ness that their dad is not there.

    Does that feel­ing of miss­ing daddy solid­ify his impor­tance to them?

    Will telling daddy later that his lit­tle girl wanted so badly to show him how she stood in a tree for the first time, make him feel bad for not being there or will it make him feel like

    he mat­ters the world to her?

     

    Category Parenting, Resilience, Separation | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 9 Comments