Your Child Is Hurting My Child’s Feelings
By: Alison Acheson
Tags: Growing Up, Parenting, Children, Play, Mental Health

When my son was in first grade, a mother approached me one school morning. Our two boys, both almost seven at the time, had played together once or twice a week as well as at school for several months, but that had come to an end. I knew why.

Your son doesn’t want to spend time together

“Something has happened,” she said. “Your son doesn’t want to spend time together…and my son is so hurt. Can you talk with your son, and convince him to play? Do you know what happened?”

Yes, I did know what happened. Or at least, from my son’s point of view; he’d caught out the other boy in a silly lie, and my son had zero tolerance for lies… to the point that, when his dad attempted to smuggle in a bag of treats to the movie theater to save them the cost of concession stand goodies, my son refused to go to the movie. “You’re not supposed to do that!” he said. For him, any form of dishonesty was abhorrent. He also told those who gave him gifts that he wasn’t certain if he liked it…but he might in a few weeks… You get the picture!

I could not tell the mother this, so I said something about how, really, it was up to my son. She looked taken aback by that.

Easy assumptions

I did, of course, feel badly that her son’s feelings were hurt, and that he was missing a friendship, but I was also stymied by the easy assumption that these two boys, by dint of being boys-born-in-the-same-calendar-year, should just be friends. As if it was that easy.

I so wanted to point out to her that we were two 35 year old women — did that mean we had to hang out and be friends? We had grown up in the same town, had three sons, had many mutual acquaintances…we should be besties by all counts! (Or we might just bore each other…?)

How do our children finds peers and mates?

People make choices about just who they choose to spend time with. They develop thoughts and feelings about who they most enjoy. They learn this by coming to know their own selves.

In my son’s case, he’d spent a number of hours with this play-mate, and then had put thought into why he was choosing not to spend time with him. (It went beyond the one “lie.” But is not relevant here.) I wanted for him to pay attention to these thoughts and his decision; I wanted for him to understand himself and his needs, and how to find solid friends. To put together a picture of what he looks for in others.

While the search for a mate is many years off, and he may have very different ideas about the finding of “the one” than I have, I could see even all those years ago, and with a young child, that these childhood steps to growing form who we become and how these “things happen” in life. If you don’t have the freedom to choose who you spend time with in primary school, how will you ever determine connections in later life?

In a lifetime, how many truly good friends do we have? A small number of really close people, if we are lucky, and a bigger circle of those we enjoy and get along with…but wouldn’t want to travel or hike with…

If we do not allow our children to come to this knowledge, by their own “trial and error,” how will they know?

It might mean some hurt feelings…but the learning is on all sides, both kids, and parents (if the parents are going to get involved!). We may need to talk through this — from both sides.

On speaking with my son, I realized he had tried to explain to the other boy, but that had proven not easy. I was glad he had tried though.

The path to becoming

Life is complicated, and so are human emotions. To stand back and allow children to reach out, pull back, be hurt, and then find those who do become friends, and see those friendships grow — it is all on the path to becoming.

Learning to say “no” to something, and to someone, is a significant step in growing up.