How I Underestimated My Entire Family

After spending a good thirty minutes trying to figure out just how to add a NetworkedBlogs widget to my blog, I am ready to settle in to writing.  That is, if I can ignore the wrenching pain in my back.  I think the miles of urban terrain we covered during our Chicago visit is finally catching up with me.  Damn flip-flops.  I knew I should have worn sensible shoes.

Anyway, yesterday I promised to write about a number of subjects that were coursing through my brain while on a writing vacation.  Here's the first one:  underestimating one's child.  The story goes like this:

Asher tends to "wander off" when we are out together.  So, entering the largest museum in the western hemisphere is a daunting task for a mother and father of such a curious and inattentive child.  Upon getting our tickets and map, and after visiting the lavatory, we huddle together under the dome on the main floor directly adjacent to the gift shop.

"All right everyone," says Jay in a very commandeering voice.  "If you get lost, I want you to come right here and stand in the middle of this circle under this dome."  Nods from the children. 

"Look around.  Do you see where we are?"  Yesses from the children.

And I brilliantly add, "And if you can't find your way here and you're scared, find someone in a blue museum shirt and tell them that you're lost."  I point in the direction of the gift shop attendant.  "Like that lady over there, okay?"  More nods.

...and we move on with our day.  We visit the are where you can make tornadoes and avalanches, then we run upstairs to catch our time slot in the Jim Hensen Muppet exhibit.  Fun stuff!  Then off to lunch. 

After sandwiches in the cafe we head down to the modern farming section.  At first, both children wait in line for their turn to drive the gigantic tractor (simulator).  Soon enough, predictably, Asher is bored so Jay takes him off to the other side of the room to check out how much cow manure it would take to power your laptop.  I stay with Cady.

As I'm waiting by the seed room (probably sponsored by Monsanto), Jay wanders over and puts his arm around me.  We chit chat for a sec until Cady's done, then I ask him where Asher might be.

"Oh, he's right over here-"  NOPE.  Gone.

"Damnit, I told him I was going to be on the other side of the combine.  He's wandered off.  Stay here I'll go find him."  Okay, I'm paraphrasing , but you get the picture.

So he goes off in one direction to look, Cady and I in another.  We've agreed to meet back by the big cow with the pile of fake poop under it's rump.

Cady and I search all over the first floor.  No luck.  Jay searches all over the second floor.  No luck.  I am beginning to panic.  Jay is getting angrier and angrier that our son has disappeared, probably thinking that he found something interesting and followed his whims with total and utter disregard for his father's directions or his mother's potential for emotional breakdown.

Cady tugs at my shirt, sweetly. (Well, maybe that's what it would look like in a movie.)

"Mom," she says. "He's probably waiting at that spot dad told us to wait at if we got lost!"  Instead of total care and concern for her brother, she says this like we are complete morons and her brother's an idiot for disappearing and ruining her museum trip.  But she makes an excellent point.  (One child underestimated.  In my panic, I had even forgotten about the meeting place.)

Jay dashes off the the dome.  Cady and I go to the security desk.  The put out a code 91 on him.  Cady goes with Dad to look at some stuff while I wait.

Within minutes, Jay is stomping toward me with anger spewing from his ears like a caricaturization of Frankenstein's monster.  "He was in the *&%#ing gift shop!"

My endorphin-flooded brain is pulsing with every emotion from relief to terror, guilt to anger!  I grab my son by the shoulders and he begins to cry.  "WHY were you in the gift shop?  WHY did you leave the cows?" I demand beneath choppy breaths!

Between sobs, my son spits out a few nearly unintelligible phrases:  "-waited at the dome- didn't come-  mom told me-  gift shop lady- scared-"

The anger rushes from my mind as I piece together the story that my incredible and completely underestimated son unfolds before me.  I hug him close and tell him I'm here now.  I repeat over and over again that he did the right thing, the right thing, the exactly right thing.  I feel like a fool, and incredibly guilty for assuming the worst of my child.   (That he got bored of livestock and hopped up the stairs to do a little shopping.)

He was a scared ten year old boy who got distracted by something and lost his family.  In his frightened state, he remembered which staircase to ascend to which domed area.  He waited (long enough for a scared ten year old boy with ADHD to think is long enough), then he went to the exactly right gift shop and told the exact right person the exact right thing.  Second child underestimated.

The incident proved to be a learning experience for all of us.  Asher spent the rest of the museum time either holding my hand or very close to me.  I don't think he wanted to experience that whole thing again.  I spent the rest of the time (and from there forward) glowing with... not exactly pride, maybe more like relief-and-gratitude... that my son followed directions in a crisis situation.  I feel stronger knowing that he can handle himself if he's lost.  And Cady, at seven, even remembered her father's instructions.

I was also humbled by the experience in a way that doesn't exactly feel degrading, but a little apologetic perhaps.  My husband knew enough to set out directions from the start.  My daughter remembered them.  My son followed them.  I panicked.  I didn't have faith in any of them.

Now I know better.  I learned an incredible life lesson. 

If you give your children the tools, they will use them.  You have to believe in your children.  It's your job.  If you don't, honestly, who will? 

And if you don't believe in them now... will they ever have confidence in themselves?