We love to protect our kids.  So, it is against everything we believe in, to back off and let them find themselves via failure.

I watch my son hang wistfully on the fringes of social play, watching stronger boys play ball.  I try to hide my fear that he will be rejected, left out.   I smile and watch the play as a spectator myself.   John sort of follows the pack, up and down the court.   Some days, he works up the courage to worm himself into the play.  Other days, it is strictly watching from the edges.

What matters is that day when he will be in the play because he wants it enough in all the little ways that have to come together to make something happen.

We wait for the magic of Self-Directed Learning (SDL), which leads to intrinsic motivation and readiness for independence.

Self-Directed Learning can only start when we fade our prompts, and back off.  Our kids have to fail, feeling loss and pain, to become motivated to use their grit.

They can surprise us with their abilities, and we must not underestimate their strengths.  We bleed while we wait and watch.  We want to rescue.

But John doesn’t learn anything when I rescue him.

Not quite in on the play.  Today.

Tonight I cried, as I often do when I think about the sensory nightmare that my kid and each of our kids must be enduring through.    I was lucky to still be in the car, my best place to weep and grieve.

I hate that I have to be such a strict mom.   For I am.  I have been trained to be that.  It haunts me that his impulse-control choices will only have larger and larger consequences.

At the end of a 7-hour school day, my son pines to decompress like this.   I wait until he says he is ready to go.  It’s quiet freedom, bleeding off everything that accumulates.   I watch quietly, sharing in the pain and victory from afar.  He sometimes wants an audience to appreciate his new tricks.

So, honor your children when they try to show what they need at the end of an endurance.   How they find their serenity now.

They are our heroes, braver than we are.  And we think we are pretty brave ourselves.

Best,

Gayle