Poor JJ. Yesterday his "quad" stopped working in Reverse. He's basically been driving it non-stop for the past 8 days. He loved driving up to something, stopping and slamming it into reverse, and then driving away again. Slamming being the operative word here! We kept telling him that he needed to be more careful. Five-year-old boys, though, right?
So amidst the tears and hysterics and outright begging us to buy him a new one, Mama's heart was breaking too. Oh my gosh! What is it going to be like when his heart is really broken by his first love? I could hardly stand it. All the while, my "rational" brain is telling me to buck up and get over it! My "other" brain (whatever that might be!) was trying to figure out how to fix the situation! Yikes!
There was no trying to talk to him last night about it still being able to go forward. "No! No! No!," he screamed as we tried to talk to him. The interesting thing about him is that he definitely does not like to be told more than once that he messed up. As Dad took his approach with the situation, JJ finally just told him, "Stop telling me!" Later I told J.R. that I have noticed that more about JJ lately. He definitely doesn't need to hear about his mistakes more than once. (Do any of us???)
As we were talking about this, I was thinking about an article that I had just finished reading in the Summer 2010 issue of Brain, Child. (Have I mentioned that this is my favorite magazine of all time? Of course I have!) Anyway, the article was written by a mother whose daughter stutters. It was really a fascinating essay. When they finally meet with a speech therapist, she gives them some suggestions to try. One struck me as a I read it and then struck me even harder through JJ's wails:
Listen to what she says, not how she is saying it.
The author then goes on to say: This last directive is startling, and I wonder what would happen if I tried to heed it in every interpersonal exchange. What if, say, I could listen to a friend's relentless stream of self-promotion and instead of hearing him say that he's the greatest, I could hear that he needs affirmation more than his next meal?
With the therapist's advice in mind, I decide to try this for just five minutes a day. The effect is immediate and profound. Right away it's less manifest that people are power-hungry and greedy and obnoxious and hostile, and more apparent that the whole world is hurting.
So while JJ's hysterics were edging into annoying, I just kept hugging him and telling him that I knew that he was so sad. When I woke up, I wondered what the morning was going to bring. So far, he has been outside for an hour, doing other things, not once mentioning the quad and whether or not it works. And for the time being, no one in our family is hurting (at least on the outside!).
