Seven Years Is Enough For A Kid

The Big Boy I Wanna Die Statements: My son is having anxiety about a lot of things, school in particular.   We’re meeting on Monday but today in the meantime I was trying to channel Liz in how she helps him feel comfortable enough to talk about his feelings.   I met with some success in so far as he told my husband and me how he was feeling, but I think I got the more negative end of the spectrum.

While asking about school it appears that a lot of anxiety revolves around school, which my son doesn’t want to go to anymore.   He doesn’t want to go to his school specifically, I don’t think he’s opposed to school in general.   When he gets upset he says things like, “I just wanna die.”  Sometimes he elaborates more because we haven’t gotten too terribly upset at this statement which in words is a lot, but for his age means he’s dealign with a lot of stress.

So today he told me, “can my life just stop now?  Seven years is enough for a kid.”   I felt so badly for him.   He told me right after that, “I just don’t like myself.”  

I’ve been trying to do some comparison stories because Liz says he thinks he’s a bad person and no one is going to love him or we’ll withhold affection or love from him if he’s bad.    This morning he got in trouble for dawdling.   I wasn’t nice about it because he had been pushing it.   He complained about being a bad kid.  

So on the car ride home I asked him if I was a bad person if I burned his english muffin?   He said no and I did some equating with needing to work on things or forgetting to do something like take the toast out wasn’t reason to be a bad person.     We extended the example into asking if he’d love me any less if I burnt his toast?   He got the comparison and I think understood.    But in the end he still said, “I just don’t like myself.”

So we have work to do to put his self image back together again and get him going with confidence to focus on his school work.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me what day it was yesterday.   After I told her it was Wednesday she said, “I can’t wait until it’s Sunday.”   What’s so special about Sunday, I asked her?  “Tumbling,” she said quietly.    We’ve not been completely sure how much she likes her private tumbling class.   She would be all over the place if she could just see what the instructor, Zak, is trying to teach her, but she’s doing her best and is learning some and now I know looks forward to class.