Stress

The Boy and I have been bouncing off each other like pinballs the past couple of days. I don’t know what’s going on. Other than we each have a fair amount of stress rattling around in our respective heads.

Kindergarten is almost over for him. And his reading was retested today. The good news is that he jumped a huge amount in the testing – he’s pretty much evened the score with the rest of his class. So that is great news for the prospect of first grade. The bad news is that his ability to deal with stress is limited. Mostly because he’s only 5 ½ and also because he is just about the most sensitive boy his age I’ve ever met. So the classroom rules have been tightened as of late to prepare the students for entry into first grade. The expectations have risen. He was in his first school play today (and it was so totally adorable!) and he had a hard time staying focused, so was constantly being redirected. And he’s playing soccer, which he loves but is just one more thing on his plate. And he’s still trying to figure out his own social life I think. We just discovered that one of his classmates lives directly across the street from us, so he’s been utterly obsessed with playing with this boy Every. Single. Day. Which is hard for everyone.

Add to that the inherent stress of everything that just happened with The Girl, my ongoing fears about our financial situation and the stress of trying to plan summer activities with an extremely limited budget and we start bouncing.

I have to remind myself that even though he’s smart and creative and funny and often times wise beyond his years that his plate is still in proportion with his age. His plate is only 5 ½ years old just like the rest of him. And his little arms can only balance and carry so much on that plate.

What I have yet to figure out however, is how to teach him to not let that stress define him. That’s a lesson we could both get a lot of mileage out of.