Probably. I will never know if it would have changed the outcome, but I will always wonder if I could have done better by my firstborn.
No one every told me how much time is spent and sleep is lost second guessing our choices as parents.
Parenting is so much more difficult than I ever thought. Our first is our “learning child” as parents. From the moment my son was born I loved him like crazy. He made me a mom and I loved it from day one. I fussed over him, held him, played with him and when necessary scolded and disciplined him. He was my life as were his brothers when they came along.
His elementary school years were good with lots of friends, rep hockey and other typical kid fun. Until grade 6. His best friend suddenly turned on him and started bullying him. I never really understood why this happened, but the most obvious explanation was that he seemed jealous of a new friendship my son had with a new kid at school. There were several occasions when he would just show up at home in tears at lunch time because he couldn’t take dealing with this boy and his cohorts. When your child cries, so do you. I lost sleep, worried and tried to make him feel better.
Then we moved to Chicago and a new school obviously with new friends. He had lots of friends, but I saw an insecurity in him I hadn’t seen before. I assumed it was a teenage thing, but looking back I realize it wasn’t. He was scarred and never again felt truly confident and worthy of friendships. He always tried so hard, so much harder than he needed to. I felt he didn’t see what I saw; that he was this amazing kid with so much to offer. He is generous, inclusive, fun, loves to laugh and be around people. His friends liked him a lot.
His father and I divorcing didn’t help.
He is all grown up now and has finished school, and getting started with the rest of his life. I am so proud. He is such a great young man with so much to offer. But I still see the wound, and it makes me so sad. I wish there was some way I could prove to him what an amazing person he is, and how much we love him just the way he is.
What would I have done differently? I truly don’t know. The way I choose to see it I must have done something right because my wonderful, grown-up, baby boy calls me whenever anything good, or bad, happens in his life. I am his first call – :). I get to weigh in still. I get to hear his joy and his sorrow, and feel it with him. His pride when being chosen as captain on his hockey team in his last year in college, his joy, falling in love with his girlfriend. His excitement with being done school and his despair over still not having secured a full-time job. This is all part of life and he is living it. Fortunately (or unfortunately), as his mom I get to live through it all again through him, and what fun it is.
Thanks to him I learned the ups and downs of being a hockey mom. I know all the hockey rules and calls. I did try to learn the
Northern SS, City Champs
rules of football, but was less successful here. But no one prepared me for how happy I would feel when he made a rep hockey team or the Ottawa Sooners Football team in University, or how I would feel when he called me after his first game in Ottawa and said he kept looking up to the stands for me out of habit, but then would remember that I wasn’t there…. can you hear my heart breaking into pieces?
He calls me his biggest fan, and I am.
Love, Mom xo
A Mom trying to make it all work! 
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