My son, my teacher: Life lessons from an eight-year-old

   I've been a baseball mom for the past four years.  My son loves the game, and I love watching him grow year after year with his skills and knowledge.  I marveled at his improvement this past year from one season to the next, and was excited when we were informed he made the all-star team for his league.  That excitement turned into anxiety quickly for me.

    Obviously, an all-star team is comprised of the best of the best, and for a kid that's not used to riding the bench, the change is hard to adjust to.  Once games began and my son sat for six of nine innings in a scrimmage, I watched his face turn from delighting to play in between regular seasons, to questioning his skills and abilities.  As a mom, I wanted to step in so bad.  Granted, there wasn't much I could do.  I'm not the coach.  My heart hurt watching him sit there.  But then, something happened.

I could hear him when the other teammates came in the dug out.  “Good job out there!”  And at batting practice.  “Man, you destroyed that ball!”  He told me, “I'm happy to be playing baseball and glad I don't have to wait until fall to play again.”

That's when I realized there was a lesson in this situation, but the lesson was not for him, it was for me.  So often we think we know how our kids are going to respond to a situation, so often we want to jump in and save the day because we want to protect them.  What I learned is that kids can surprise us and often they are more mature than we think, and even more mature than we can be sometimes in certain situations.  We want to protect them, but sometimes we need to let them feel what they are going to feel in a situation and have them adapt accordingly.  My son is only eight years old, but he's teaching me just as much as I'm teaching him as he grows up and I'm excited (and a little anxious) to see what the next lesson will be.

Originally published 7/15/21 on the LowCountry Community Church Blog