No matter what you do as a parent, how much you teach your children or warn them about all the dangers of the world, there’s nothing you can do to fully protect them. One day, they will have to go out into the world without you and fend for themselves.
But there are things you can do to make it seem less scary for them.
Even the smallest gesture can give them the strength to make the right decisions or get through the day with a brave face. One mother, Liz Petrone, found out that something as simple as a little doodle would remind her kids of their confidence.
She wrote about her experience in sending her son off into the world as he waits for the school bus.
Here’s what her post read:
“The anxiety has been strong with the littlest lately. I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s the way the seasons shift, a little at a time so slowly until it’s not slow at all anymore and it’s become cold so fast that you swear you inhaled the warm air of early fall and you exhaled in a foggy smoke of breath into the holidays.
Or maybe it’s just that he’s been asking me every single morning since he started school in September: “Mommy, is today Christmas?” and forever I’d just laugh and say oh no baby, we have a ways to go, except now that’s not so true anymore and the anticipation is so much I think he might spontaneously combust.
“Anyway, I watched him start to cry through the bus window as they pulled away the other morning, his face changing at first imperceptible like the seasons and then crumpling into a big rush of sloppy tears, and the bus was mostly gone before I could do anything. And yet still I tried, standing out in the middle of the road with my hands reaching towards him even as the big yellow box rounded the corner and drifted from sight.”
“The next morning we sat at the bus stop together and I pulled a pen from my coat pocket. I grabbed his wrist, kissed the blue of his veins where the blood we share flows through his veins and drew this heart.‘I know it’s hard sometimes out there,’ I told him as the bus pulled up to take him away. ‘I want you to look at this heart every time it feels like too much. I want you to look, and I want you to remember that no matter what happens out there someone is here waiting for you to come home. Someone loves you.’
He crossed the road, climbed the bus steps, and I watched this time as his face appeared in the window. I waited for him to see me, to smile or wave or even to cry, but he never even looked at me. “
“Instead, he looked at his wrist.
I know it’s hard out there a lot of the time for a lot of us. I know the holidays can amplify that and so can the cold and so can the dark. I do.
But maybe what we all need to remember is just that simple. Maybe it’s not a fix, not by a long shot, but it’s a comfort just the same, and comfort can go a long way when you know someone loves you.”
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The anxiety has been strong with the littlest lately. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the way the seasons shift, a little…
Posted by Liz Petrone onWednesday, November 29, 2017
