It is no secret that in this season of our lives, Jack exacts the most out of us as imperfect and usually impatient parents.
At four and a half, he is a budding introvert, with remarkable ability, while being fully eloquent for his age, to go non-verbal and shrill as his emotions overtake him, at seemingly random intervals and over allegedly minor incidents. He is known to burst out physically as well, with big feelings swelling too broadly inside him for him to control.
He's become a "stop, Jack!" Jack. Even Emery frequently points to him and repeats, with 'our' furrowed brow and 'our' intonation: "Stop, Jack!" I fear she thinks it's his name.
He's the arithmetic average between an effervescent beauty, sweet storytelling, and effortless intelligence of an older sister and a robust, healthy, demanding toddlerhood of a younger one. And as such, it somehow became that he gets the tips and tails of our focused attention. Which upsets him greatly, quietly, and erupts to the surface in seemingly unrelated crises.
We respond most expectedly with frustrated empty threats, typical 'before' parenting behavior of an average "Super Nanny" episode. We shame him for creating disruption, and admonish him with guilt. Somehow the real or alleged pace of our lives has allowed us to excuse his emotional discomfort as 'his' issue, and not ours; we've stopped going alongside him, and started coming at him, against him instead.
A few nights ago I went up to Jack's room with warm tea to soothe a throaty cough that woke him up. As he sipped, we whispered a bit, and I was taken aback by what all this 'correction' has amounted to in his introspective cranium... He repeated a few times that he does 'bad things' and that he talks to himself to 'cut it out', and I think my heart started bleeding a little. He has begun to internalize his own 'badness' as self-identity imposed by loving but inattentive parents. Even writing this, I tear up with so much compassion for this boy, who is ironically so much like me, not knowing how to best look for and receive the attention, affirmation, and goodness from us. We're missing his boat.
When I'm enabled with patience, I'm humbled to see how remarkable his response, how his whole being lifts up to sweeter words, softer tone, affirmation and love. He doesn't stop being a child, of course, but a very different child, calmer, more outspoken, more confident in speaking as he's more confident in knowing he'll be heard.
Next month, we go back to his cardiologist for the annual check-up, and it's the time of the year I'm more poignantly reminded of what a unique creature Jack is - not just physically, but also in his own valid, different, curious soul full of Jack-ness which I hope to never extinguish from him. I hope to undo the early onset of this deceptively shallow damage, hope there's time to reverse, to connect, to build up, and to reaffirm. The quote I came across another day spoke of cement setting much quicker than one expects, in parenting world. I pray Jack is still pliable, soft, reconstructable and we - committed, invested, and prayerful.
I simply want my son to always know firmly and without any hesitation an answer to the question whether his mother loves him. I want him to count on that knowledge without conditions and rules and amidst any circumstance; and beyond that, I want him to believe firmly that I revel in his God-given goodness. You're good, Jack. You're so, so good.
