It’s Not WHAT He Says; It’s THAT He Says It

D was ‘the dog named Lingo’ for his second year of life.  Then it was Thomas the Train for half his third year.  He was a deinonychus dinosaur for a year and a half.  It was not until he entered pre-school at the elementary school that he permitted me to occasionally call him by his own name instead of whatever character he was pretending to be.  Then it was sharks his kindergarten year and rockets followed by dragons his first grade year.  All these fascinations lasted six months to one year with some transition time in between and a few trial weeks of other themes.  Thank goodness the Madagascar one was short lived!  The point is that ever since he could talk, he communicated to us that he was not completely himself.  As a highly verbal boy with an incredible imagination he was able to verbally paint his alternate reality for us.

However, since increasing his time in the playroom for the month of May and then bringing in volunteers (who are completely wonderful), D seems to be on the fast track of trying new characters out – including himself!  All these shifts in scenery have led me to a huge realization:

I’ve kind of been missing the mark on the whole acceptance and celebration part of our program.  It wasn’t intentional and I wasn’t even aware I was doing it.  The Son Rise principles are very clear on celebrating the interaction we receive from our children and accepting them as they are at this moment.  So for me with a son that has spent most of his life pretending he was something else I started out with acceptance of what he believed he was at the time.  For the first three months of our program it was dragons.  “Thank you for telling me you want to be a dragon.  I do to.”  “Thank you for playing this dragon game with me.”  Somehow along the way I started putting my focus on accepting the dragons (well, he said he was a dragon) and not actually accepting him as a person.  Now that that’s been cleared up I can look back at pat myself on the back for all the love and acceptance I have given him that has gotten us to this point.  Going forward I can be grateful and excited for this ability to love and accept him on a whole new level.  That way when he comes into my room and says, “Mom, I’m Wrecking Ball today”…I can say, “Dude, that is so cool. Thank you for telling me that.”  And if the next day he says, “Mom, I’m the Texas Chainsaw Massacre”… I can say, “Hey that’s rad, thanks for sharing.”  Henceforth, when I say “Thank you for sharing insert character here with me,” the emphasis is on the thank you for sharing.  The thing is, it does not matter what he wants to try on for the day, it’s the fact that he is sharing it with me.  Yeah, I missed the mark on that one but there is no self-judgment and now I have a new direction and even more solid relationship with him.  I have already felt a deeper connection and bond with him in our sessions since this realization was made two days ago.  Whew, glad that’s been cleared up.  Remember that chance for opportunity in the last post when I was the pissy morning mom?  I took the opportunity and knocked it out of the park!