An invaluable lesson from my son

Yesterday I received one of my greatest and unexpected lessons from my son. I was driving my children to school and we started talking about love and falling in love. So I asked my fourteen year old son if he had ever been in love before. I figured it was a good time to do so because it was a spirited, nonconfrontational, and lighthearted discussion. We had the music blasting and we were all in an open and good mood so I knew it was the best time to get the most honest answer out of my son.

My son asked me what I meant by being in love. I said you know where you have strong feelings for someone. And what he said after that nearly stopped my heart. He said, “I have difficulty expressing my feelings because when I was younger and really sensitive and used to cry all the time, one day you told me to stop being so sensitive. To stop crying so much. So I did. I stopped crying and I stopped being sensitive.”

Even as I type what my son said to me, my eyes well up with tears at the thought that I had caused my son to shut down. To retreat into a shell. I had no idea I had done so. I took a deep breath and immediately apologized to my son. Telling him, it was not my intention to shut him down. Not my intention to desensitize him. That it was okay to cry. Okay to be sensitive. Okay to be who he is.

I told him it was better to let it all out then to keep it bottled up inside because if he did, he could cause himself to have a heart attack or stroke. I told him if he was unable to show his emotions he may be a lonely man because he would be too closed to allow love really and truly into his life. I told him I thought I was showing him love all the time because we hug and kiss a lot as a family.

I thought about the fact that my son does not allow anyone to leave the house without telling them he loves them. So to say I was surprised by his statement is an understatement.

All day I thought about our conversation feeling guilty as a parent for scarring my son’s life. Realizing just how easy it is for us to cause our children to retreat. How easy it is for them to shut down particularly as they are developing. So I decided to put my rather personal situation out there to remind anyone who is a parent how fragile our children really are. How they really take to heart the things we say and do. They may not express it to us right away or at all but we have to be careful with the things we say and do to our children as we may lose them forever or set them on a path we had not intended.

I am just grateful that my son felt comfortable enough with me to tell me how he was feeling so that I could be more aware of the things I say to him. So that I can encourage him to come back out of his shell. To trust me again opening himself to trust others with who he is so he won’t spend the rest of his life hiding from his feelings, suppressing his emotions. My son is a beautiful young man on the cusp of becoming a man and I want to give him the best tools to be the best man he can be. the most loving and open man he can.

And then I found this quote which is so true. “Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.” 
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

I am so grateful for being given the opportunity to reverse my son’s heart from gelling shut. To be given the opportunity to help him to open again. To feel. To love. To be proud of who he is whether that means he is super sensitive or not. And I am so grateful for my son and my daughter because they are amongst my greatest teachers as well as my students and for them and the lessons I am learning to be a better mother, wife and woman I am truly grateful. Namaste