Choosing not to rescue your child
A boy, we’ll call him Calvin, asked my son to carry his backpack for him, after an injury left him on crutches. I was proud. My son is kind, thoughtful…a nice guy. (You can read the full article here, if the link at the bottom doesn’t work.)
Calvin had been in my son’s life in 1st and 2nd grades, but the the friendship had grown apart over the last four years, as my son’s interest evolved into sports, and Calvin’s didn’t.
Over the next couple of days, I began to notice the little snippets tacked on to the end of my son’s stories that revealed how much of Calvin’s incapacitation was influencing my son’s school day. It wasn’t just that Calvin insisted on walking the long way around the gym, making my son miss the regular group of guys he normally walks home with, there were other things. My son carried Calvin’s lunch tray, which moved my son to an entirely different “lunch table,” where the conversation introduced words to his vocabulary that made my ears burn. (He did share these new words with me as a “what do you think about this” conversation.) My son was no longer sitting with his regular group of friends.
Then, I heard about the funny trick Calvin played on my son.
“He left his binder, pencils and papers on his desk, and said I had to put all his stuff away for him.” Calvin’s hands and arms are fine — his leg is injured, I thought. “While I was stuffing his stuff in his backpack, Calvin left and went to the elevator, pushed the button, and left without me. So I had to carry his backpack, plus my backpack, all the way down the stairs. Calvin just laughed.”
Tell me more, I said. “Well, he calls me his slave… but he’s just kidding,” he said. “And, he snaps his fingers, and tells me to hurry up.” He added, “actually, he can’t ’snap’ his fingers… he just pretends.” To learn more about how I un-rescued my child, continue reading Your Child’s Strengths, here.
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