Last night I stepped out onto the street to take a walk before dinner, and encountered my twin nieces (they live next door). Ming was agitated, shouting and teary-eyed, and Hui was crying hard. Now, even though I don't have children of my own I have enough experience with three 4-year-old nieces to tell some types of crying apart.
Ming was ticked off. Hui was heartbroken. It turned out that they had been playing at the neighbor's house and the neighbors wanted to have dinner, so they sent the girls home-- basically put them outside their gate and closed it. All reasonable enough given that they are right next door (though I wish they'd had their nanny with them), but the girls hadn't wanted to leave and hadn't been given a choice.
Ming was climbing the neighbor's gate and immediately shouted that she wanted me to lift her over it so she could get back in and keep playing. I hunkered down next to Hui and she just crashed into me, bowling me over onto my butt, sobbing into my neck. What she said was, "They don't want us in their house anymore." With shudders and heaving breaths and tears trickling into my collar. Misery was just shimmering off of her.
I hugged and soothed as best I could, telling Hui that the neighbors like her and Ming just fine, but they needed to eat dinner now just like we do. She was so upset that I'm not sure she even heard me. I just sat in the street with Hui clinging to me in a tree-frog hug, till her grandma and the nanny came out to see what all the commotion was about.
That was last night. This morning I am left with a feeling of profound regret-- Hui is going to carry a little scar on her heart from this. I wish I could stop that. I find myself wanting them to stay little kids forever, secure and happy, drawing pictures of mermaids and octopi and having as their biggest concern who draws the best Ariel hair. But I guess that I'm learning slowly what all mothers know-- kids grow up, they go out into the world, they get their feelings bruised, develop those scars and start building walls around their hearts.
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James M. Emmerling
trudi jo davis
ConnieMack
batface
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
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Comments
I just can't imagine this was about some sort of perceived rejection. I think the children were playing and wanted a different out come. When that didn't happen, they, well, acted like four year olds.
There's a whole lot of playtime's that are going to get interrupted in their lives, this was a gently learning curve, not a sharply scarring blade.
Thanks for reading!
Marcelleqb: absolutely, and the nanny shouldn't have left them over at the neighbors' so close to a mealtime.
A couple of days later my sister-in-law asked me what had happened that day, because Hui had refused to go play over there the next time they had a play date. She really experienced the thing differently than Ming.