Change is Hard
Regardless of what age or what you're changing
Just quit smoking, or hoovering those donuts they tell you. Like it’s easy.
The familiar, on the other hand - that’s the easy. You know what a donut tastes like. (delicious) but maybe you’ve never tried kale. Kale can be considered scary for those that are adverse to vegetables.
So, yeah. Change is hard.
But it didn’t dawn on me that the end of the school year might be something that the child was actually afraid of. The end means finished, done, over.
What I had assumed with her jumping off the school bus for the last time this year with joy was just the opposite. She arrived, hot tired and cranky.
I thought that it was because she was tired from staying up the night before too late due to the last day excitement, but nope. She came home and cried and screamed and cried.
She was not five minutes in the door when I heard the first “I’m bored”.
It didn’t matter what it was, it was all wrong. Her life was ruined. Again, we just chalked it up to tired. We fed her lunch and then told her it was quiet time for an hour, but of course she would have none of it and despite my best attempts, there was no nap but at least the mood was a bit better.
She perked up, and as promised - we went out to celebrate the last day of school with ice cream. She chose rainbow flavor and devoured the entire bowl.
By the time we got home, full of ice cream and with temps topping 100 degress, we spent the last of the afternoon in the pool. The pool was so warm. It was over 90 degrees in that little pool. I like a warm pool, but it was almost too warm. It was an odd feeling to have it feel cooler when you get out of the pool when it’s 100 degress outside.
The rest of the evening went as usual. I let her run around in the sprinkler until she was done after dinner because it’s summer vacation and we have nothing planned for tomorrow, so whatever - it’s summer vacation and long nights need to be spent outdoors under a sprinkler.
Finally, we got the house put back together for the day and she’s in bed looking at her yearbook from kindergarten of all her friends so I hop in the shower as she’s quiet in bed and the night is done, right?
Oh, no. She burst into tears and she came downstairs to BW worrying about missing her friends and she won’t see all her friends anymore. She was beside herself. BW sat her down and explained that she had phone numbers of pretty much all her friends and we can arrange dates. She also explained that at camp she is going to have so much fun she will make new friends.
This seemed to get her off the ledge and as I tucked her in she went from sad to realizing the very good possibility of making new friends.
As it turns out, all of us are going to summer camp orientation tomorrow evening so I am sure she’ll be more comfortable about things once she meets some other kiddos and sees where things are going to take place and what camp actually looks like.
As I left for the last time, she was rhyming off the possibilities of summer camp and how much fun it would be.
But change is hard, and we forgot that. We knew what was coming next and she didn’t.
It’s no fun being afraid of the future - regardless of your age.
Trying to Be Brave,
TH and Co.