TELL ME ABOUT IT

Dear Carolyn: I’m mom to a delightful 3-year-old who is engaging, smart and shows me a new way to look at the world daily.

But lately everything feels so HEAVY. He wouldn’t take the field for his first soccer “practice,” he had his first “bullying” incident – a 5-year-old called him a “baby” – and we’re having him assessed for some food issues. He’s not good at his scooter yet, and was sad that his friends were scooting. I find myself panicking that he’s going to be a social outcast, “the weird kid,” and I can’t help but randomly pray to “just let him be OK.”

Am I the weird one? What do I do?

– Anxious

Anxious: All at once I want to reassure you, warn you, thank you for your honesty and stand up for all “the weird kids.”

Everything about us worth celebrating – art, science, literature, curiosity, ingenuity, empathy, humility, compassion – would be diminished without them.

Raising a unique being – who has his own strengths, his own interests and his own timetable – to be comfortable in his own skin means not only paying attention to the feedback he’s giving you about what he likes to do, but also accepting these results as value-neutral.

For example: It won’t be good if he eventually warms to soccer, or bad. It’ll just be. It’s who he is either way.

Perspective is good, but sometimes actionable intel is better.

So the first step of training yourself to resist the tyranny of expectations for your child is to set new, more flexible expectations for yourself. You say you feel weird having scooter dread instead of just not worrying – but don’t feel weird. Recognize instead that it’s normal to want everything to be OK.