Emma got her first
legitimately scraped knee during the weekend.
Her little knee is
red and pink with a bit of healing-yellow color.
Apparently, she cried
for about a minute and a half, then when she was asked, “Emma, did you hurt the
ground? Is the sidewalk okay?” she spent a minute patting the pavement with her
tiny hand.
Since then, she’ll
point at her knee during bathtime or diaper changes, looking up with a
question. She’ll try to scratch at the forming scab.
Don’t touch it, Birdie. It’s a scratch. It’s okay. It happens
sometimes.
The day before her
knee scrape, she pulled a dining room chair down on top of herself. Eric was in
the other room and just as he called – Emma?
What are you doing? Be good, please, he heard a crash and a two-second
wail. When he reached her, the chair was on the floor and the girl was across
the room, bump in the middle of her forehead and smile on her face.
You okay, honey? It happens sometimes.
Don’t think, not for
a minute, that Emma’s not a drama queen. She’s a toddler, after all. She gets
worked up over two-second delays when she wants goldfish crackers right now.
And don’t think, not
for a second, that my heart doesn’t swell and rip itself open every time she
bumps her head or falls on her bottom or slips backward off the couch.
And please don’t ever
think that we don’t do our best to ward off these minor (and all major)
injuries. But let’s be honest here. Emma isn’t a baby anymore. She’s a toddler,
and all too soon she’ll be a child. A girl. She walks, she’ll talk soon, she
has her own opinions, and she will do her own things. And she will get hurt.
It happens sometimes.
When Emma first
started rolling over and reaching for things and earning her first bumps, Eric
and I gasped and reached for her and held her and examined her to make sure she
was okay. She was our baby, our tiny girl, and was she hurt? Her response to this was always screaming. I’ve been hurt, my parents are worried, this
is serious!
Then once she bumped
her head on the table and fell over and it took us a second to realize it, so
we didn’t gasp and scream.
And neither did Emma.
She reached up and pulled herself back up and continued on like nothing
happened.
Since then, we make
as little fuss as we can about her bumps and scrapes. And she mostly doesn’t
notice them, either. If she starts screaming, we’ll quietly make sure she’s
okay, we’ll hold her close and kiss her forehead, her hair, her tiny hands,
then we’ll lean back and ask her, “Emma! You’re okay, honey. But Birdie, did
you hurt the floor? Is the floor okay?” The distraction of checking the floor
is (usually) enough to calm her down.
(Let’s be honest,
sometimes it’s not. Sometimes she needs cuddles and pooh bear and a long nap.
And that’s okay, too.)
Other parents
sometimes give us funny looks, when Emma falls at the park or on the sidewalk
and we pretend not to notice, and encourage her that nothing happened.
But know what? Sometimes it happens.
And we think it’s
better for her to learn now that bumps and scrapes and minor hurts happen sometimes.
It saves the tears for the big injuries, the need-mama-now moments, the
hold-my-heart-please times.
From the age when I
could walk till I was about 12, I had perpetual grass stains and scabs on my
knees. My mom spent an embarrassing amount of time washing dirt stains from my
clothes. She warned me repeatedly that I would have nasty scars on my knees for
the rest of my life. But I’m not afraid of dirt. I’m not afraid to fall.
Sometimes it happens.
And I want that for
my children, too.
But I'm starting to realize that it will be far harder to prepare my daughter for a different kind of hurt -- the kind that isn’t physical. And that happens sometimes, too.
Yesterday, as usual,
I took Emma – knee scrape and head-bump – to the park. There were two other
little girls, older girls, maybe five and seven, playing together with their
moms watching from a distance. Emma’s too little to play with these bigger
girls, but she’s completely fascinated by them. She likes to walk up as close
as possible, touch their hand or their shirt or their game, and smile up in
their eyes.
I want her to
interact with people, but I don’t want her to interrupt a game she’s too little
to play. So I let her walk up to the girls and watch them for just a minute
before I told her brightly, Emma, you
like these girls, don’t you? Say hi! They’re big girls, and they’re smart and
pretty. Look at their fun game! But we don’t want to get in their way. Come on,
let’s go down the slide.
She cried for a
minute – please, mama, the big girls!
– and I pulled her away. We climbed up the park structure. I heard the girls
continue to play. Then I heard one of the other mothers speak.
“What did you say?”
She walked over to the girls. “Excuse me, that’s not kind or polite. I don’t
want to hear you say that ever. Be kind.” She walked back to her bench and I
heard the little girl whisper angrily to her friend.
I don’t like that baby.
And my heart swelled
and ripped and I watched my curly-haired little girl run awkwardly to the
swings, stop to clap her hands, then point up at the rubber seat.
There are plenty of
people in this world who I don’t particularly like, and plenty who don’t like
me. And as much as it hurts, I know the same will be true for my daughter.
She will be ignored.
She will be rejected. She will be cast out of groups. She will likely know the
heart-hurt of losing a friend she thought was close, she thought was
trustworthy. She will feel abandoned and forgotten and lonely.
All I can do is pray
and hold her and try to model the right response.
Be now and always kind. Keep a tender heart, my love. Sometimes hurt
happens.
A while later, after
the other children had gone, I turned away for a moment to put something in our
stroller and I heard Emma’s two-second wail from where I left her. I’m right here, honey. It’s okay.
A minute later, I saw
a brand new scrape on her forehead.
Oh. That’s what
happened in the twenty seconds I walked away from her. She barely even
noticed. And it’s okay.
Because sometimes it
happens.
