So I didn’t loose this week, but I didn’t gain, either. Overall, I consider that a win.
It was a tougher week than I expected with the kids going to 1st grade. Nate was having a really hard time adjusting to the mixed grade playground, which is also much larger than that for the kinders. He wasn’t able to find his friends for some reason, and felt very lonely.
Unfortunately, being a six year old, that’s not how he expressed it at first. Instead, he blamed it all on having to wear a brace on one leg, and was inconsolable because it was no fair, and no one else had to wear one. On top of that, he always loses races.
It was a lot worse than it sounds: night after night of crying about the injustice of the world. I thought it was parents who were supposed to drive the kids to therapy, not the other way around. How do you explain a disability to a kid when you don’t know the reason why yourself? It really isn’t fair, and knowing like I do that it could have been a lot worse doesn’t make it any better. I’m glad my first instinct this time wasn’t to push down those feelings of being inadequate.
It turns out the disability was a scapegoat for these other feelings of being left out. We were able to come up with a plan where he’d talk to a friend before going to recess about where he’d be so he could find someone.
