Mommy Daughter Talk

I wanted to record a moment that I had with my sweet Ivy this morning. She is 7. We were working on her homework. It is Spring Break, but since we leave for a cruise in two days, the school gave us work to do so we don't fall behind when we go back. Anywho, Ivy and I got to talking about class time and she told me that many days after lunch at school, she cries. I asked her why, and she was very shy to tell me. Apparently there are some kids who sit at the"friends table" at school, and when she tries to sit by them to have lunch, they say things like, "There's no room." If Ivy goes to sit somewhere else, sometime they will yell, "Ivy is weird." It hurt my heart to think about that happening to her. It makes me feel sad to think that things like that are being said to her and she has to navigate her sadness and loneliness all by herself. It brought me back to my days in elementary. There were MANY days when I myself felt lonely and weird. I can remember the moments when kids were mean to me. I can remember many recesses spent alone. I also remember that I survived those days and learned that my weirdness was actually a very GOOD thing and has been a great asset in my adult life. I find other WEIRD friends and we have a great time together. So I used that lesson that I learned and shared it with Ivy. I told her how those kids calling her names means that they are uncomfortable with who they are and that nothing that they said was true. If she still felt "weird" then that was a good thing! Next time they tell her that, she needs to yell, "Thank you!' to them. I went through and listed all of the weird stuff that I do as an adult that makes me a special person and makes me who I am. The times I sing really LOUD in public, the times I do the happy dance in my pink dress, the times I try to be funny, but I'm not. At one point, Ivy started laughing and then she reached out to me to give me such a big long warm hug. We hugged for a while and she said, "I love you so much Mom!" I said, "I love you too." Then I asked her how she felt. She said she couldn't put into words the way she was feeling but that she felt happy! I was so relieved. I always want her to know she can talk to me and that I might have some small way to help her through life's craziness and hardships. I worried that as she got older and problems got more complicated, I wouldn't have the right words to say. Today, I did. Heavenly Father blessed me with that today. Now we are going to make her a T shirt that embraces the "weird" and has some kind of unicorn on it! Being her mom is the BEST!