Dear Daydreamer: Why Is Every Single Morning So Hard?

You sweet little boy, you're really not so little anymore. Nine years old sounds like a lot. At your age, your sister was already packing her own suitcase for vacation (and didn't forget a thing). You're different. Our youngest. Our little dreamer.

Sometimes we'd love to crawl inside your head and see what your world looks like from in there. You can disappear into comics, doodling away without a thought. It's wonderful, and you look so content. You can get lost in Playmobil for hours. But then, unfortunately, there's everyday life. And your world and that one just don't fit together.

You can't stand pressure, especially time pressure. Time just works differently for you than it does for other people. Come on, we have to leave for school in two minutes! Hurry, hurry. And you? You open the glue and try to squeeze in one more craft project.

When you come home from school, you throw your jacket on the floor. Same when you come in from outside. Every time. For five years now I've been preaching: please hang your jacket on the kids' coat rack. It doesn't get through to you. It just isn't important to you. Sometimes I feel like I'm knocking on a frosted glass window. It just doesn't reach you.

This morning I asked where your glasses were. “No idea.” But you must know where you put them last, right? We looked together and didn't find them. Then you get upset. Overwhelmed.

Then you yell, “A shoe is missing.” You can't go to school with one shoe. The other one is gone, gone, gone. Mooom! Where is my shoe? I tell you I don't have your other shoe. You get furious, because obviously we hid it. You just can't keep your things together. Some days you'd even head out without your backpack if I didn't ask whether you might have forgotten something by any chance…

Every night we argue about brushing your teeth. Getting ready for bed on your own, just once? Nope. You go to your room, lie down on your bed, and wait until we say: okay, now take off your pants, now brush your teeth. Why is that?

Your sister does all of this by herself, so it can't just be how we raised you. What kind of help do you need so things get easier for you? In the long run, it's exhausting for us to say the same thing over and over and over.

Nothing just happens on its own, and that takes so much energy. And yes, it often puts us at odds with each other. Can you please just do it, for once? Get dressed in the morning so we make it to school on time? Why is it so hard for you to take responsibility for yourself?

Even walking to your room to get new socks is too much effort for you… Sometimes I think the world is just too fast and too much for you. Sometimes I also think you'd rather have been an only child, with your peace and quiet, free to lose yourself in your fantasy worlds. Time without stress, without pressure, just being, in total harmony.

I wasn't like this, your sister isn't like this, and that's why it's so hard for me to understand you. And I want to understand you so badly, because you're a great kid. Smart, sensitive, a faithful and loyal friend to your buddies. You love being a kid so much, you play so wholeheartedly, you could completely lose it with excitement over a police car with flashing lights or a model train running around its track. Maybe you just don't feel like being part of this grown-up world?

School just gets in your way. “It's their own fault if they start class so early, then I'm just going to be tired.” Those are the kinds of things you say.

I think you'd happily stay home all the time. In your pajamas. No stress. With audio stories, comics, and pencils. But unfortunately that doesn't fit with our daily life, or with the compulsory school attendance law in Germany.

If there were such a thing as a sabbatical for school, like there is at work, I think I'd take it for you. Just let you play for another year, until you get bored. And maybe then you could come back with new energy and a little more responsibility for yourself. But that's wishful thinking. Instead, all of this is just draining so much energy right now. Are we expecting too much of you?

 

Photo: pixabay