I can feel the panic rising in my throat like bile. We are at the pool and P is showing off for a group of boys, trying desperately to be noticed and loved. It brings it all back. Being the social outcast from grade 3 on up. The teasing, the ignoring, the bullying. The tears. The hours of wishing I could belong. My only recourse was to NOT belong. If they thought I was freak then I would be a freak.
He is 2. Only 2. Is that need to belong so deep inside our biology that it begins that early? The tears are in my eyes now as I think of it. Please don't let him be like me. Please let him be okay. Please let him not go through that. It's not about being popular, but more about being okay. I don't want him to go through that. But I sure as hell don't want him at the other extreme, the type of person who made my school years hell.
I see him striving for attention, to be noticed, to be loved. Already. At 2. Please don't let him be like me...
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Oh Dear.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry for all the teasing that you had to face. And I am so sorry that you see P on the verge of something similar.
Well, you have a lifetime of painful experience to know that it does not help to stay on the sideline. Help him, Kakunaa. You have been there and so you know. Help him.
Dear, it is normal for children to try and please, to make themselves loved, to seek attention. You were and are too sensitive, and this is why succumbed to the self-fulfilling prophecy of 'if they see me as a freak, then I am a freak'. Precisely because you know both sides of the story, you can help P be his own man, find himself, and his place among peers. You can do it. You are a great mother. Be honest to yourself and to your children, and they will learn from your mistakes eventually. But they also need to make their own, because this is how we humans learn. It certainly hurts to see your child make mistakes, I am very aware of that, and I sure hope I can practise what I preach, but mistakes, they will make and they will learn.
ReplyDeleteThe best lesson a mother can teach is how to be kind, to others and to herself. Kindness is never overrated. And these days you find it so rarely.
P is your son, but also his own person.
Hugs.
but at two...its just hey come play? right?
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