Having been brought up in a family of girls, when I had my first boy 15
years ago, I looked in bewilderment at this small manchild who peed in an arc
every time I tried to put a nappy on him and a mum in the ward next to mine said
to me, ‘Boys are a gift – they are tough on the outside but very, very soft on
the inside. They need more nurturing and
care than you would think.’ Mind you she
may have been a little biased as she had just given birth to her third child, a
girl, who was born with a full set of milk teeth and I left hospital as she was
shrieking at the midwife that there was ‘No f***g way’ that she was going to breastfeed…
3 boys later and her initial words could not be more true. Throughout the years from the first stumbling
toddler steps and Upsy Daisy moments, to the first little sports day races, to the
first sprints on full on athletics stadia, my boys have matured into little men
– all tough and muscly on the outside, but very soft on the inside. And part of that growing up process is
dealing with fear, and dealing with failure.
And part of dealing with those, is how you deal with it as a parent.
Whether it is losing at a sporting venture, or your child not getting the
academic qualifications that you had hoped for, or your teenager has suffered heartbreak
for the first time, it is how you react that determines how your child copes
with his very real (even if hidden behind a façade of Don’t Care)sense of
failure. And it doesn’t come easy. And
there is no way of knowing if you have got it right or wrong, until it is said,
and then it can’t be unsaid. Does the ‘Upsy
Daisy, Get Up Now’ approach from a little toddler tumble, ascribe to the utter
desolation of being the one to lose a penalty kick? Does the ‘I love you because You are Special’
sentiment actually work when all the child wants to do is fit in with his
peers? And does the ‘Just ignore Them if
they are being Mean, they’re only Jealous’ statement apply when your child is
deliberately being targeted? When is it
time to step in, and when is it time to stand back?
As adults, it seems fairly simple – we have developed our own coping
mechanisms, and either vent to our good friends and family over a nice cuppa,
set out to prove our detractors wrong, or hole up for a while, licking our
wounds until we have come up with a strategy. It is up to our kids to discover their way of
dealing with it, and it is up to us to support them with it.
In my case, last week was a week of very mixed emotions. Little Man, at 9 years old being the only boy
in his dance class, and the only male dancer in his school class, had come back
from his weekend of all male dance with the Royal Academy of Dance full of
pride in what he had achieved and the fact that he had felt part of a ‘gang’. His school encouraged him to show off his
certificate and talk about what he had done in an assembly. On leaving the room, some alpha females
called him Weird. In a rugby match later
when he was delighted to be moved up from the C’s to the B’s, some of the boys
were querying why. But he said nothing
to me as I waved at him from the sidelines, and he threw himself into it with
gusto and tackled well, going off with honour and a bloody knee. It was at the match tea, when someone pushed him
out of the queue, that his bottom lip started to quiver, and then the tears
began to fall. The male Games teachers,
looking hopelessly out of their league, brought him to me. Initially I tried the Upsy Daisy method. Didn’t work.
Then I tried the ‘Just ignore Them if they’re being Mean, they’re only
Jealous’ approach. More tears, because
of course all he wanted to do was to belong.
So, as it was nearly the end of the day, I took him home, and we had a
cuddle on the sofa, and he had a good cry about maybe he should give up dancing
but he didn’t want to, and I held back a few tears. And then we had a cup of tea. And then we were laughing. And when he was in
bed I replied to his teacher’s concerned email.
And the next day he came back beaming because everyone had been nice to
him.
And then yesterday Eldest Son (14) played in the semi finals of a National Schools rugby tournament
in which over 500 schools had taken part.
It was held at Allianz Park, home of the Saracens, and the boys were
enormously proud to walk out on to the 3G pitch in front of a roaring
crowd. Eldest Son is the fastest in his
team, and is used to sprinting past everyone on the pitch and so plays on the
wing. Unfortunately, the opposition’s
fastest man was playing against him. It
became a contest of speed. Eldest Son
lost the battle, and limped off the pitch with two bloody knees and a dented
ego. His team were simply outclassed. The boys bowed their heads in defeat, utterly
miserable and dejected. The watching
dads clapped their sons on the backs and tried the Upsy Daisy method. Some boys had tears streaming down their
faces. The mums tried the ‘ We love you
because you are special, you did really well to get this far’. The boys carried on walking. They went back by coach, vented to their
friends, and by the time they arrived and we were waiting with carefully blank
faces, they were laughing. They had
sorted it out amongst themselves. They
had dealt with it in an adult way.
This morning the carpenter came in to start on the skirting boards. Passionate about rugby, he had been watching
his only son of 17 play in a match at the weekend. He asked how Eldest Son’s
match had gone and I told him. ‘We lost
ours too,’ he said gloomily, and we both stared into the mid distance. I gathered myself.
‘Cuppa?’ I asked brightly.
And he nodded, smiling ruefully.
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