Heartaches

On Friday Max came home sad from school. He has really done well so far this year and has been enjoying school for the most part. His favorite activity is Fun Friday, which is free time in the classroom. The class can play on the computer, write on the chalk board, play at the teacher's desk... I was happy to hear about Fun Friday because Max has test anxiety and always hates going to school on Friday's because of his spelling test. Well, Friday he came home and told me that he had to put his head down for the whole 45 minutes of Fun Friday. I tried to understand why he didn't get to participate and from what he believes is he didn't do well on his Science worksheet. I find it very hard to believe knowing that the reward is based on behavior, but the more questions I asked like do you think maybe it was because you weren't listening... just made him more upset. I will be writing a note to the teacher to understand why he wasn't able to participate, but I still don't feel that any 8 year old should have to leave their head down for 45 minutes. I know it's important to have incentives, but maybe it should be sitting quietly at their desk and doing worksheets or something. Just thinking of him with his head down for 45 minutes made my heartache. Not a big deal, but I still felt my heartache for Hanna yesterday. There is a girl from soccer that Hanna has met and has really enjoyed. Hanna feels they're friends and she wants me to play them on the field together and wants her to come play over... Well on Saturday this girl started to pass out Birthday invitations. There was only the 3 girls there so far so she passed one out to the other girl and Hanna said, "What's that?" You could tell what it was so I said, "Do you have one for everyone?" And she said, "No just for..." which was about 3 or 4 girls from soccer (that she has known for sometime). I told her if she doesn't have one for everyone on the team she can't pass them out at soccer. Inside my heart ached for Hanna, but I know these type of things are going to happen to my children throughout their life (which I hate to think about) and so I don't want them to dwell on it and feel sad and down about these type of situations, so I made it appear as no big deal hoping that it won't be for Hanna. Which, it might not be a big deal to her (I'm hoping) because she hasn't brought it up since, so it's probably just me. These two situations made me realize the next steps of motherhood and the heartaches to come. (I don't want to even think about further down the road of more serious ones).