Life Lessons From the Ball Pit
Parenting has a way of humbling you. It's amazing how quickly I started doing the things I said I'd never do as a parent. You know what helped me be ok with that? The bigger picture.
I could obsess over cultivating each child's individual, optimal growth opportunities. But I'd rather them learn to thrive in real life, where environments are not personally curated. I could expend myself trying to guard them from getting hurt, but there's also space to practice compassion and apologizing to each other as hurts happen. I don't even try to pretend life will be a joyride, but I hope they see me roll with the punches with praise on my lips.
My family is uniquely wired to learn that, although we all have equal value, we have very different needs. We can't stress about "fairness" or "sameness" because that's not what love or justice is really about. It's much more personal.
I learned a lesson about life and love from a ball pit today...
Benjamin's autism is tangled into a complicated nervous system disorder. The short version is he cannot regulate himself without specific external safety cues. He's been crying, screaming, and panicking since my mom left. All he can say is he needs a "prize" because Gosa left.
His grieving was gridlocked inside of him. He was trying to tell me, but the stubborn, old fashioned, "kids these days, tsk, tsk, tsk" part of me COULD NOT give a tantrumming child a reward to make him stop.
The truth is, he wasn't tantrumming. He was having panic attacks. His brain doesn't know the difference between a life or death situation and unprocessed sorrow inside his little body. He was asking for exactly what he chemically needed, one of his safety cues: a flush of dopamine.
Benjamin kept using the word "prize" but didn't know what exactly he was looking for. Together, we excavated that he was sad because Gosa left, do he needed something to make him feel happy. I dropped my pride and the piggybacking guilt. I knew that, more than the momentary magic of a "prize", he needed adventure, wonder, something out of the usual, and to have my full attention. I suggested going to the local play place, and his entire countenance changed. He looked me square in the eye and said, "Mom, this is better than a prize." We made just in time for the last hour of play.
He was a different Benjamin the moment he wiggled his toes into those trampoline socks. He bounced, adventured, explored and had my gaze for an hour. While he bounced, he looked straight at the camera in my phone and said, "I love you so much, Gosa. I've been crying for you. I really miss you."
Grief unlocked. Heart set free. Benjamin could access himself again.
I never thought I'd be a Tuesday play place mom. I never thought I'd concede to the screaming and crying. I never thought I could get so flustered and frustrated at an innocent being I helped create.
I also never knew that being a mom would teach me how personal, relational and non-judgmental true love is. True Love meets you right where you are, even when it doesn't make sense. He opens locked doors and heals broken hearts. And THAT, my friends, is what the perfect love of Jesus does.
It is my honor to stumble in the shadows of that love with the ones God entrusted to me.
