Stand Down

The parenting curveball comes out of the blue.

Just when things are running smoothly, the curveball gets thrown and you are searching your character and taking polls across a panel of family and good friends for the best ways to proceed.

I think we got our curveball.

Recently in a social setting I've seen Grayson struggle with sticking up for himself.  He sends a message ("Stop it, I don't like that."), the message is received, and the non-desirable behavior continues instead of desists.

Right.  That's life, irritating things are going to happen.  People won't always listen to you.  Frustrations will occur in friendships.  His life right now is interacting with four to five year olds working through their own developmental stage, odds are things like this are going to happen a lot.  For all I know there is a mom out there blogging about how my son irritates the ever loving stuffing out of her boy.  It's all a matter of perspective.  On an intellectual scale, I appreciate this.  As a personal aside, I can also appreciate how his actions may even be inviting such behavior.  Adults don't always read social cues well or treat each other with the utmost respect so why should I expect children to have that capacity?

Also, I completely understand intervening every time he needs me to make it stop is not ultimately helping him.

Yet his pleas to help him are hard to ignore.

I want to coach him through this the right way.  As parents, we become fortune tellers who can't help but constantly zoom ahead and picture our children with their scruffy bedheads navigating themselves through a summer camp away from home, a board meeting in Colorado, a marriage in their future.  It will eventually be up to them to sort through the minutiae and figure out the best way to proceed. 

But the mommy in me is having a hard time standing down when I see it happen in his current social circles.  It's so difficult to not come to his rescue after several of his own attempts have gone ignored by a friend.  Sometimes I just do.  Sometimes I swoop in and save.  Shame on the mommy.

We've had the talks about tone of voice, choice of words, walking away.  He is getting stronger than he once was in that department.  Maybe this won't be an issue next week much less by kindergarten but I worry.  (And maybe most likely this is a much bigger deal to me than it is to him.) 

As his mommy I wear a cape and will save him every time but as his fortune teller I must resist the urge to do exactly that.

Standing down has never been so hard.