Feelings

On Sunday, we went to our nephew's 4th birthday party. Brody kept disappearing to play with the our older nephew and some of their friends from the neighborhood. Brody is considerably younger than these other kids, and didn't really know how to play the way they were playing. They were playing with Nerf guns and just sort of hanging out. Brody is too young to just hang out...he wants to play! He was yelling (something we are working on) and taking their 'arrows' and running so that someone would chase him. At one point, I went back to peek in on him in the bedroom (and try to get him to come out to play with his other cousin) and one of the boys told me that he was being annoying! It broke this mama's heart. I tried to coax him out to the living room, but he insisted on playing with them, so I let him be. Then, they headed downstairs to play. Heath went with to supervise. They weren't doing much more than they were doing up in the bedroom. When it was time to go, Brody didn't put up a fight at all. Usually, he is flailing on the ground and making us chase him to leave somewhere. In the car, he was really quiet and had a really sad look on his face. I'm not sure if there was one thing that happened, or if he just wasn't clicking with the kids, but I think this may have been the first time that his feelings were genuinely hurt. It was really sad for Heath and I. I know that this is not the last time that we will deal with hurt feelings, but it was definitely the first. And it hurt mama more than it probably bothered him. Heath explained to Brody that those boys were not playing nice and that Brody is a nice boy. Luckily, he got over it pretty quickly by playing a game of footsie with Madelyn in the car!

Brody will start school in August, and I know that he will be making some friends his age, and I know that he will be left out at times and have his feelings hurt. It's just hard to know that I will not always be there to make him feel better and prevent situations from happening in the first place, but that's part of letting him grow up and learn. I just don't think I'm ready for it!