Powerless....

It's one of the saddest things as a parent when your child is upset about something... you want to make things better, but you are resigned to the fact that you can't make everything better. However, that said, it would be weird to be a constant shield over your child as well....

Today, I picked up my oldest daughter from school and she was quite visibly upset about something... and she was holding this little school work from school that she was trying desperately to hide from me. When she did eventually show me, it was a little bit less good than what I normally see from her artwork (I show mostly her artwork here, the other stuff like mathematics and writing is a little less interesting on a blog!).

After a bit of cajoling, it turns out that one of her friends had been teasing her as she had not done very much with the exercise (which was to do with shapes and making them into pictures?). It's pretty hard to get a straight story out of a sobbing child... but it seems like that she was upset only about this (I hope it wasn't anything else, but it really seems like this was all that it was...).

If that was the only thing, then it is the sort of thing that just needs a hug and a reassurance that I'm not at all disappointed or angry (I'm not entirely sure why she would have thought that!). A little bit of a snack and a little nap after getting home seemed to have done the trick to forget everything as well....

So, in this case, it appears to have been a touch of misplaced sensitivity on her part (partly affected by the slow parting of ways of the two friends...). However, it did suddenly remind of the fact that as she grows older, there will be more and more of these cases, with more serious causes... and that I can't be there to help her dodge the upsetting situation...all I can do is to help her pick herself up and continue onwards aferwards...

It is a bit of a sobering thought... as an upset child makes the parent sad as well, even if the root cause (in this case) is quite trivial.