Life is hard...

M4 stuns me sometimes with his thoughtfulness and sensitivity. The other night I came upstairs to find him already out of the bath, sitting naked on the floor, crying. Disclaimer: he was very tired from having a buddy spend the whole weekend with us, but still! When I pressed him as to why he was crying, he finally let it out: "I'm just thinking that when I get big, I don't want to have to leave you." Good grief! Think fast, think fast! So I told him that he would probably want to leave when he got big (he disagreed vehemently), but that he could always come home, that Daddy and I would always be here for him.

He didn't seem entirely convinced of that, so I said, "OK, you don't have to leave if you don't want to...". (Is this lying? It's not exactly the truth! My whole future life flashed in front of me with visions of M4 as a twenty-something slacker laying on the couch in his pajamas at noon, watching TV.) Then he said (still distraught), "But animals leave." So I explained that people are different than animals...our kids don't just leave for good when they're two or three years old. This seemed to cheer him up. So did this:


Behold the power of Dari Barn! I do struggle with how much to push him, though. This is the kid who wouldn't go on the potty until we laid down the law and said, "That's it; no more diapers!" This is the kid who wouldn't ride the pony at the zoo until I told him it was his last chance. This is the kid who doesn't like the summer day camp that every other child raves about. I want to respect his sensitivity, but I also want him to be able to cope with the world! Especially when it means leaving home...