Seeing Red

It started with a red shirt. My kid was supposed to wear one to show support for a teacher at his school who is battling cancer. During their field day, each child was to wear the red shirt. A school picture would be taken to encourage this brave warrior and to let her know that the students and staff were fighting this battle with her, albeit on the sidelines. Only MY kid refused to wear it. With a surly look on his face, he explained to me matter-of-factly that there was no way he was going to wear a red shirt, no matter what the cause. Now mind you, this is the same child who just two days before, and multiple times prior, had gone upstairs to pick out his outfit for the day and come down with a…yup, you guessed it. Red shirt.

I was frustrated by his refusal to wear what was being asked of him. I could feel my temperature beginning to rise at the perceived ridiculousness of his particular refusal. But then I had a moment of clarity and I asked myself, what was it that I really wanted him to learn from this situation? The bottom line was that I wanted him to feel compassion and to show support for someone else who was going through a hard time. It had nothing to do with the color of his shirt, and everything to do with what kind of person I am ultimately trying to shape him to be.

So I explained to him what it is like for someone going through cancer. I explained to him what it was like for ME when I went through cancer, and how much it helped me to know that there were people who were supportive and who cared about me. How it helped me to fight. And when I was done explaining, my kid said to me that he still didn’t want to wear the red shirt. No matter what. Frustration level? Back up to 90%. He did, however, want to give this teacher a dark chocolate bar instead. OK, frustration level back down to 10%.

In that moment, a lightbulb went off in my head, and I realized how often it is that we try to control our children to do what it is that we want them to do for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes it’s so we don’t look bad as parents, sometimes it’s because we want to exert control, sometimes it’s as simple as “I said to do it, so you must listen and do it. Without question”. Yet when I stepped away from these thought processes for a minute, I realized that I am sometimes guilty of forgetting the WHY. Why do I want my child to do X, Y, or Z? Is it for my benefit? Or is it for his? And if it is truly for his, what is the end-goal?

In this context, I just wanted him to show his support for a teacher who was struggling, and bringing a chocolate bar was doing just that. I told him how nice it would be if he could write a card to go along with the chocolate. Without any further prompting, he proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes writing a letter to this teacher, providing her with tips on what she could do to help fight the cancer. Information that he gleaned by asking his trusty Mom about some tried-and-true tips! He painstakingly packaged the letter and the chocolate in two separate envelopes, taped them together, and wrote more pleasantries on the outside of the envelope. He was so careful with it that he even put it in a special place in his backpack where it wouldn’t get damaged when he delivered it. In that moment, I felt great pride. Pride that my child would take the time to do something so nice for someone else. Pride that he would commit himself to an act of caring that took more than two seconds to slip over his head. 

I wish that pride had carried through to the next morning, but as we drove to school and I dropped him off, I saw that he, in his plain white shirt, stood out like an island surrounded by a sea of red. My first instinct was to swear. My second was to ask myself, “Why couldn’t I have a kid who just wears what the other kids are wearing? Who has to be different?!” And then I stopped myself in my tracks. Realizing what I had just asked. And it dawned on me that I have a child here who is comfortable being different. A child who doesn’t mind standing out amongst the crowd. Who is, at 7 years old, already less concerned with what people think of him than I am with my extra 32 years on him. A child who showed his support in a truly loving, thoughtful, and caring way, while refusing to show it in the same way that 649 other students already had. And in that moment, I realized. He IS different. And sometimes a little white when all you’re seeing is red, isn’t such a bad thing, after all.