A few days ago I was walking G-Girl home from the bus stop and she was complaining to me that no one had sat with her on the bus. “Today no one would sit with me on the way home, and it made me sad. It hurt.” How my heart hurt to hear those words coming from my little four year old girl. I told her it was ok, and I was certain her friends would sit with her again another day. I tried to explain why the little six year old girl that she sometimes sits with might prefer to sit with her grade one friends. I tried to explain how it was just one day, and it was no big deal.
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| © Denise Kappa | Dreamstime.com |
Flash forward two days to her next school day, I am walking G-Girl home from the bus and again she tells me, “No one sat with me on the way home from school Mom. It hurt.” Again, I feel horrible for her. As someone who had a miserable gradeschool existence, my child being bullied or ostracized is right near the top of my worry list. I start to give her some of the same explanations I had the time before. How I’m sure her friends didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, and they probably just wanted to sit with someone else today and they would be back tomorrow. I tell her that I understand how it can make her feel sad and hurt her feelings.
Her reply? “No, mom. It doesn’t hurt my feelings, it hurts my head.” Wha…? “When no one else sits with me I slide around too much and I have trouble staying on the seat and sometimes I fall off head first. But it’s ok, because I’ve been practising…. and when the bus tips on it’s side I um.. brace myself ugh, I use my hands to hold on and I stay on the seat. I’m getting better at it.”
Oh, goodness me. Think about it, you take a three or four year old kid, who only ever rides buckled into a car-seat and you toss them on the bus, on a nice wide slippery leatherette bench seat. I really shouldn’t be surprised when she tells me she sometimes ends up under the bench in front of her. It kills me to discover that she’s been having problems with this since September and only happened to mention it now.
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| © Brittany G | Flickr.com |
Here I’ve been worried she was feeling lonesome and for her the real concern wasn’t having a friend to chat with on the bus, but simply a matter of ballast. It’s a bit laughable. Talk about transposing my own issues onto my kid. I guess it’s a good example of why we need to listen carefully to what our wee ones are actually saying.
I hope you found this worth a chuckle, as I did. Have any good stories to share of when you misunderstood what your little one was actually trying to tell you?
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