It occurred to me after my rant last week that my reporting what a pain my son was being lately and then announcing that I was planning to spoil him a bit may not have made sense to everyone. Why reward rotten behavior, after all? Allow me to explain. 
I had a little epiphany over the weekend regarding my son’s behavior. It seems he is suffering a bit of post-holiday separation anxiety. Suddenly everything made sense.
He and I were walking home after his tennis lesson and he was demanding to be moved up to the next grouping. He is fantastic, and has progressed enormously in the last few months, however he is too young (and small) to move up to the next group of players. The youngest in that group is eight and he just couldn’t really compete with them at the age of six. I explained that to him and he started in on how he wanted to grow up fast, he wished he were older, etc. I gave him a hug and told him not to be in such a hurry to grow up because mommy would miss him when he grew up and moved away. I said this intending to try and jolly him out of his snit. It didn’t help.
In fact, he started to cry.
He then went on and on about how he didn’t want to move away from me, ever. I told him that no one was going to make him go anywhere. At present he intends to live with me forever and has in fact compromised on his plan to get a dog and said he’d get a cat instead so he could stay at home. Then he told me never to even suggest that he might want to move away one day because it makes him sad.
My poor, sweet boy. He’s often a bit clingy after having had a long holiday at home but after that episode, it was quite clear to me that hugs and reassurance were going to go a lot further than lectures about paying attention in class and being a “big boy” were going to. And I’m quite confident that he will indeed move out one day – but it seems I will have to let it be his idea!!
My daughter on the other hand is moving up to the next tennis grouping. She must be feeling some stress about that change as well because she was sleep walking last night and when I went to guide her back to bed, she started telling me about tennis. More hugs for her too!
Children are a daily challenge. As soon as I think I have it all figured out, they change the rules. If only we could know what we are doing ahead of time so that we weren’t messing with their heads the whole time, they would be a whole lot better off…
