Every parent understands that all crying is not created equal.
And so when I heard a thumpity, thump, thump down the stairs (don’t worry, we have a split level, so it was only about five stairs), followed by some piercing shrieks, I had a strong feeling our imminent departure to school was going to be delayed.
I gave the wailing a few seconds to verify its authenticity and then headed down. At the bottom, I found Tyler, our 7 year-old, a bit crumpled and in some serious pain.
“My shoulder, my shoulder, my shoulder!!!” he screamed repeatedly, as our 5 year-old, Parker, grabbed some paper towel and dabbed tears from around Tyler’s eyes. Just as an aside, Tyler found this to be far from comforting.
“You ok?” I asked — a question which, to anyone older, might have elicited a sharp and unpleasant response.
To this, the boy did responded with more mumbles, screams and tears. Perhaps, I began to think, something is wrong.
But something could not be wrong, you see. I was about to drop the kids off at school and then go to my office to produce a live Webinar in a few hours. My wife was already at work at the hospital and could not be disturbed. I had no time to go to the ER for X-rays, etc. Thus, Tyler really had to get to school.
As it seemed more and more that school was not in his immediate future (they dislike it when you drop off screaming children), my mind raced in a search for options. What was I going to do? Was I going to call my retired father-in-law to see if he could come up and watch Tyler while I did the webinar? I could always take the boy to the hospital afterwards. I started to look up his number on my phone but then decided otherwise.
“Tyler, let’s get your brother to school and then we can come back here. You can rest for an hour and then, if you’re feeling better, I’ll bring you to school,” I said. Though still in pain, he agreed to the plan.
After dropping Parker off and spending about a half hour on the couch with his shoulder iced, Tyler indicated he was ready to head back.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Ok buddy, here’s the deal,” I said, uttering words that even surprised me. “I finish my webinar at about 1:00. And so that means that no matter how much pain you’re in, you can’t tell your teacher or go to the nurse until then. Can you do that? Do you understand?”
“Yes – got it,” he said. “But what if I can’t write and my teacher notices and asks what’s wrong and then I tell her and she sends me to the nurse?”
“I don’t know buddy — just do your best to make sure nobody knows.”
So with that bit of award-winning parenting, I dropped Tyler off at school and headed to the office. I arrived in time to perform my final prep, go live with no issues and execute a very smooth event. With so much concentration involved in producing a webinar, I have to admit that Tyler’s situation had slipped my mind.
Packing up my computer and things, I reached down to grab my phone and turn the ringer back on when I saw the name of my son’s school flash across the screen. Everything suddenly came back to me, after which the first thing I did was look at the time: it was 1:21. And the next thing that came into my mind was: he did it!
I immediately beamed with as much pride as any father who watched his son score the game-winning touchdown or get accepted to the college of his dreams. My 7 year-old had gotten my message and toughed it out. To me, that meant a lot.
When I picked up the phone it was, of course, the nurse. She informed me that Tyler’s shoulder hurt and it might be a good idea for me to pick him up. When I arrived, I asked her advice on an ER trip and she said it likely wasn’t necessary — that it looked like just a deep bruise and he’d be fine with a little rest.
When we got outside, I told him how proud I was.
“Yeah. I almost went to the nurse at 12, but when I looked at the clock I remembered what you said,” he beamed.
“You are the best buddy. I got my work done and now we can go do lunch — wherever you want.”
I hear from the folks we interview, and from reading in general, that people entering the working world (the millennials, etc) today are soft, entitled and unmotivated, that they expect to be given everything they want with little hard work and no sacrifice. They demand instant and undeserved gratification. They are the product of helicopter parents presiding over games that end in ties. Well, as we all know, life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, you have to put in a lot to get a little, you have to gut it out, tough it out, and endure a little suffering. I’m trying to teach my children this lesson early — perhaps out of necessity — that you can’t always get what you want immediately, that sometimes you have to consider the situation of other folks in the picture, and that you can’t always run to the nurse’s office.
Looks like we’re off to a good start.
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