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Monday 22 June 2015

Absent Father's Day: How do kids deal?

Sometimes I forget how tough kids are. As someone who only looks on from the outside, not having any kids myself, I do wonder how parents get their little ones through things that even full-grown and adjusted people would find destroying. I know I wrote a blog post about books that you can give children to help them deal with bad situations but how much can that actually do in the long run.
                                                         

Yesterday was Father's Day; a lovely day when people go on Facebook to say how much they love their dads who are not even on the social networking site (my dad hates the idea of anyone knowing his business). Needless to say, it being a Sunday, our Story-time revolved around books about Dads with a bit of discussion about what the little ones did for them. The mothers looked at me as if to say "getting the kids out of the house for an hour was my gift to him" and there was talk of home-made cards and breakfast in beds and all the good stuff that comes with a Hallmark holiday.

All except one little boy. He's one of my regulars and so I know him well. Very outspoken, he is always trying to make everyone laugh. He comes with his mum every week and yesterday when I was asking around, he mentioned that he had given his granddad a card and I left it at that. Dad didn't seem to be in the picture but he was totally fine laughing with all of the others and giving it socks whenever I asked questions.

After the hour was up the same little fella came up to me to thank me as he always did (a sweetheart I'm telling ya) and I told him his t-shirt was cool. I noticed he has rosary beads on around his neck and I wondered if he was wearing them as some sort of statement as young kids like to do. He informed me that he was wearing them because he had been to the grave yard that morning and with a wave he ran to his mum who was beckoning him towards the door.

The boy was 8 years old and yet had managed to come from visiting, what I assume was his dad's resting place and then gone to story-time and listened to a load of other kids talk about their dads and how great they were and he still contributed. I had no idea up until that point, he was acting the same as he always did and the amount of respect I have for his mother was huge.

Like I said, I don't have children myself and I don't have nearly enough life experience to know how I would deal with that kind of situation but I see now how it is possible, even for just an hour, to keep going and carry on. It just makes you think is all.I don't think we give kids enough credit and you can never really know what people are going though at the end of the day. Kinda makes you want to give people a little more slack.

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