The growing pains of a young boy, just starting in school here, translated…
“Nobody wants to play with me during break!”, I was playing with my son who’d started the first grade, he’d, told me this, it’d made me worried as his father. And my mind started, seeing him between classes, all alone, sitting in his seat, or walking on his own across the hallways, my heart started, wrenching.
I’d recalled how it was I started, getting into playing with my friends, how I’d, made friends whom I’d, kept, in contact with a long time? The memories from over thirty years ago, all came back up to the surfaces now. This little boy who is playing so happily with me, had felt, so lonely in school. Later on, I’d asked him, he’d not hated school, nor was he, against, going to school, it’s just that during the time between the classes, watching all the other children having fun together, not knowing how to be a part of the group, it’d, made him feel worse than in class.
How did I pass through the period of not knowing how to make friends? Or maybe, I’d, never, encountered such hardships, and naturally, started, interacting well with the other children? I really can’t tell, I’d not expected, that as I’d become a father, my own son’s, loneliness, hurt far more, than my own.
Seeing him getting happier, engaging in play, and thinking of how he wasn’t, making any friends in school, my heart wrenched tighter and tighter, and tighter.
“Dad, your turn.” He’d, successfully, removed that block from the Jenga stacks, very, carefully, placed it, with care, at the top, told me, who’s now, completely, distracted. Now, family is, his only, playmate, and all I can do for now, is, to be there for him, until he makes a friend on his own, then, have his friend take away time he would spend, with his, family, then, I can see myself, worrying, over many more things, that stemmed out of him not having any friends.
There are the tasks, the obstacles that each and every child will need to master at the various levels of development, and all of these obstacles, became the multitude of worries on the parents’ minds. When will this, ever stop? I’m thinking, as parents, we will, NEVER let go of the worries we have for our own young. Like this Jenga game we’re currently playing, as the blocks are stacked up higher and higher, we are enjoying the joys of getting older, but at the same time we’re also, carrying the burdens of how it may all come, crashing down suddenly. But so long as the whole family is together, even if our young bumps into the difficulties in their lives, we can, start over again, and, work toward the, next, milestone together.
And so, this father’s feeling the hurt of his own young son, because the son just started school, and, couldn’t find anybody to play with, and so, he felt upset, and, the father felt the child’s pain, but there’s, nothing he could do, but to, watch his own young go through these, growing pains, and all the father can do is, be there by his own young son’s side, to offer him the companionship he needed, until the son becomes, more social, more outgoing, and can make friends of his own…
Life, the Obstacle Course 