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Home › Diaries › Shel › July 5, 2006

Shel's Diary Entries

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Just Because I'm Due

July 5, 2006

My preteen is pretty complex. He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Words don't fall from his mouth. His eyes do not betray him. Rather, he can go for a good long time hording his emotions. As a woman, I am bothered by that. I want to know everything about everybody. I tell my children that I can't help if I don't know what's going on. That works with the younger ones. With my preteen, it's a different story.

Let me back up here and say that anger is not one of his secret emotions. You certainly know when he is angry at someone or something. Fortunately the anger is short lived, and he's the type of kid that always apologizes. He just needs a cooling off period to experience the emotion on his own, and then he makes right what went wrong.

What I worry about is the deeper stuff. I worry about when he's stressed, scaried, sad, worried, etc. I tell him that I am here to talk about it – whenever he is ready. More often than not, he doesn't come to me to talk. He goes off on his own, and when he does reappear, he seems better, happier, peaceful. I'm happy about that, but I'm sad that it's not me that is helping him through this. I'm also sad because not knowing everything about a child I once knew everything about is scary.

Yesterday I asked him to promise me that he is at least talking with God about what's bothering him. He looked at me with that preteen look that says, "Are you really asking me this question?" and then he said, "I do that. I always do that, Mom. I tell Him everything."

I'm happy about that, but I still wish he'd talk to me as freely. Then again, maybe I'm just too nosey for my own good.



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