The Sensitivity Gene

So is it my fault if I have a four year old preschooler who is tearful?  Who responds to criticism and teasing with sadness, even shame?  Who doesn't want to leave me and tells me she misses me already before we have even let go of hands outside the classroom?  Apparently, yes.  It is always the mother's fault.  Have I been overindulgent because when she feels sad or hurt I hug her and let her express her feelings?  I wonder, should I have told her to buck up and hold it together? 

After a great first week, save Friday's teasing episode, Lily has been melting into tears before we even walk away from her at the drop off.  She got the gene.  And she got it from me...and Didier.  We are sensitive.  I am often emotional when I am frustrated or moved by love or beauty or fatigue.  I try my damnedest not to cry in front of the girls, but they know that Mommy has feelings.  I suppose this is a choice to let them see me as a human being and not an automaton/autopilot mommy.  My mother was quite stoic, still is, and rarely showed any emotion other than a slight smile and blank eyes.  I think she was taught that this would actually protect her from feeling her feelings.  My father, try as he might, has puppy dog eyes, much like Lily, and his hurt showed in his eyes, so he barked loud and fast so you would never see the tears.  I want Lily to know that all emotions are fine.  That they are part of our human experience.  I love that she can tell me how she feels, but hate that I often can do nothing but hug her and tell her how I love her. 

I cannot take the sting of being lonely from her.  I cannot show her that she is loved even when she is not the center of a group telling jokes and getting all the attention.  I cannot convince her that clinging to someone else, even a teacher or aide, will not ease an unsteady heart.  She must learn, like we all must to trust herself and love herself in the midst of the teasing and ignoring and loneliness and stillness.  When the eyes of my beautiful girl well up with tears, I want to drink them away, to take the pain on myself, but I can't.  She is entering the race and the soft fuzziness of babyhood is getting rough from wear and tear.  Reality is meeting Lily on the school yard and in the classroom and it is a shock to her tiny little system.

So Mommy is to blame because I let that little girl feel special and important and couldn't find the words to make her understand how people are sometimes unkind, how loneliness can creep up on you in a crowd, and how moving slowly away from the source of unconditional, constant love hurts at your core.  She is hurting and I know she will learn, as we all did.  But I ache for her and wish she had been spared the dreaded gene.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.