Worry Ripping

It's nice to be reminded that, when it comes to our kids, moms are all faced with the same general challenges, have the same worries, and work through the same types of frustrations.

After this post about Luke's various aches and trips to the nurse, I received a lot of good advice and "hang in there"s from moms with similar experiences.

Once I stopped badgering the poor boy and he had time to think through it, he decided his need to go to the nurse may have been due to worrying about two things. The first is getting into Art class and not having a stool at his table. He is usually the last one in the room and all the stools around the table are spoken for so he has to go to another table and find a stool and carry it to his table. Seems relatively benign to me, but to him it is a big, embarrassing deal. His second worry has to do with the warm up exercises in PE. He feels he is not very good at jumping jacks.

So, his trips to the nurse have been on the days he has Art or PE, and typically only lasted long enough to miss the first few minutes of these classes and the activities causing him worry. One piece of advice I had gotten was to have Luke write down his worries on a piece of paper before he goes to school. We would put the worry paper in a drawer or I would carry it in my pocket all day. That would take the worry away from Luke and I would worry for him.

I asked him if he wanted to do that, and he was just a little interested. So I suggested he write his worries down and then after he's done we rip up the paper and throw it into the trash. He loved that idea, so before school I wrote the words, he drew a picture, and then he tore, punched, smashed and smushed that paper with the will of a lion ripping up his morning breakfast. Then he tossed his worries into the trash.

I was very encouraged by this process and thought certain it would help with Luke's worries, until Jack said, "Now that you ripped up your stool, you'll never have one when you get to Art."

That little s*$%. I think I may have melted his face off with the evil eye I gave him. That's when he decided it wasn't such a bad idea after all and wrote and ripped up his own worries. I wonder if my face was one of them.

And Luke hasn't been to the nurse since.