Full of Awesome

A friend posted this article on facebook and I loved it! The premise is that when we're kids, we wake up in the morning, convinced of our own awesomeness. And, really, more than convinced of our awesomeness, we just don't question that it exists. We wake up with messy hair, missing teeth, funky breath, mismatched clothes,  and scuffed up shoes...and we know we rock. There is no question. And then, as time goes on, we start to doubt that awesomeness. We get messages from others, both those who we barely know and those who we love dearly that we are less than awesome. We get messages from the media that our perceived awesomeness is not even close. We doubt. And that doubt turns ugly sometimes and we lose all aspects of that awesomeness. We forget that we used to be so certain, so confident.

It's not that the awesomeness is gone. It's just that we forget it was ever there. And that is unbearably sad.

I see my kid just starting to forget some of his awesomeness. The doubt is inching its way in. I hear it in the hurt in his voice when he talks about how a kid in his class said his shirt was ugly. I see it in his eyes when he talks about how he was on "yellow" all day at school but he doesn't know why. I feel it in the hesitation he has just started to display when approaching other children.

And it's breaking my heart. And I don't know what to do about it.

This child, who is such a light in my life - and the lives of so many others - is starting to doubt that light, his inherent awesomeness. He is forgetting, or having sucked out of him, that he is full of awesome.

And maybe it's just what happens. But maybe it's what is happening to him at school. Because it's only been since he started school this year that I have seen this change in him, a change I've only now been able to articulate. People around me (important people in my life, and my kid's life), keep dismissing my feelings that this public school thing isn't working. Because they love him, too, I keep pushing my doubt back down, ignoring my momma gut. But those feelings keep coming back up.

It is not okay for my kid to forget that he is full of awesome. And I can tell him - and I do. But I'm only me, only one person, albeit an important person in his life. But just my telling him simply isn't enough. And I don't know what is.

I mean, seriously, how full of awesome is he??!!

Today's lesson - Parenting is hard. And sometimes the hard comes in the most unexpected ways/places.