A half hour ago I got the alert that Buster Posey is retiring. I’m a lifelong Dodgers fan, but I immediately felt very sad. Captain Mommy and KD (my 14 year old) are huge fans of Buster.
I haven’t spoken yet to KD, but I already feel compelled to somehow try to help him feel better. But there’s no way I could ever do that. After all, Buster Posey is retiring. I can’t stop that. I need to let him feel all of the feelings he’s having and work through them on his own. We don’t want our kids to hurt. But we can’t take the hurt away.
It seems like an appropriate time to share one from the archives..
A few days ago, KD was reading the paper and updating me, rapid-fire, on Buster Posey’s stats. I was also reading the paper and asked him to keep it down a bit. Literally in mid-sentence he hit the brakes and didn’t say another word. Off to his room he went.
I was stunned that he was stunned and left, and I felt especially guilty because KD and I have been banging heads like crazy these days. I know it could be way worse between us, and we still have plenty of good moments
Unfortunately, these days, moments like that have been more the exception than the rule. So when I shut down our sports talk I wondered where, when, and how we’d connect.
I had a few different options (e.g. taking off and going to the gym) but none seemed better than going into his room, where I found him in his homemade catcher’s gear, pretending to be Buster. I suppose I could have talked through what had happened. Instead, I joined him an exhausting game of “pretend baseball,” which includes pitching, batting, and sliding (by him). Per usual, he won in the bottom of the ninth. From that point on, we were connected like burgers and fries for the rest of the day.
Being a therapist who thinks about stuff way too much, I wondered if I’d somehow manipulated him into getting our relationship back to where I wanted it. Should I have let him work through whatever he needed and come back when he was ready? Then I realized that by going back into his room, he’d gotten from me exactly what he’d needed and felt reconnected. In return, I also felt reconnected.
When I shared this with a therapist friend, he put what happened into a theoretical framework. When I went into KD’s room I’d repaired the pain I’d caused, and KD (and I) felt better. Within reason, it’s not the pain we cause that’s the most important. Instead, it’s the repair that really counts. My guilt lessened and confidence about my parenting skills cobbled back together, off I went into the rest of my day. I hope I remember all this stuff tomorrow, the first day of school.