Lily Asked Me to Stay and Not Say the Thing

"Can you just stay here and not say the thing?"

That was Lily, last night, around the time the lights should have been out. She was under the quilt with her face turned to the wall, and I had already said the thing, which is "Let's think of three good things from today." I say it fast and in a nice voice. She's eight and she knows it by heart, the way she knows the order of the Primary songs.

She couldn't tell me why she was sad. I asked, then asked a better way, and she said she didn't know, and I believed her. So I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands in my lap, which is harder than it sounds when you spent five years in a classroom where a crying child meant it was time for a project.

What Ruth Ann did in the coat cubbies

My second year teaching third grade, the teacher next door was Ruth Ann Kesler, who had been at it since before I could drive, or so it seemed. I was twenty-seven or so and sure I was good at this.

There was a girl in my class that year named Delaney whose best friend had moved to Arizona over a weekend. Delaney came in Monday and went straight to the coat cubbies and wouldn't come out. I did what I did. I offered her the good pencil, then a job (passing out the spelling folders), then a little speech about how the best way to stop missing someone is to make a new friend.

Ruth Ann, who had seen it from the doorway, asked me to run my class down to the library with hers for the first twenty minutes, and when I got back with both lines of children she was sitting on the floor of my room next to the cubbies. Not in front of Delaney. Next to her, facing the same way, with her knees up in her good wool skirt. The spelling lesson was late and Delaney was at her desk, red-eyed and finished crying. Ruth Ann never told me what she'd said, or whether she'd said anything.

I asked her later and she shrugged. "She didn't need me to make it smaller," she said. "She needed somebody to not leave."

I wrote that on an index card and it lived in my desk drawer until I left teaching. I still don't do what it says very often.

Why my first move is always a project

Some of it is the teacher in me, since a classroom runs on the next activity, and a child in tears is a child not learning, so you move them along, kindly, toward something. That's fine for twenty-six eight-year-olds and a spelling test. At my own kitchen table it quietly tells a sad child that her feeling is a problem I'm now going to solve for her.

The other part is that when Lily is sad and I can't find the reason I feel useless, and I would rather fix something than feel that. Three good things from today is mostly for me.

Two weeks ago I wrote about how to talk with kids when a grandparent is slowing down, and most of that was about telling children true things in small pieces. This is the step before that one.

What "acquainted with grief" gives me to work with

This week's Come, Follow Me reading is Isaiah 50 through 57, and the manual takes its title from chapter 53. The lesson sets the servant in Isaiah against the conqueror people were expecting. Here is what Isaiah gives them instead:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Isaiah 53:3

Isaiah is not writing a parenting book, and I'd be making things up if I told you this verse is about comforting your daughter. It's about the Savior. But a mother can read it for what it shows, and what it shows me is a man who knows grief from the inside and a crowd that looked away. "We hid as it were our faces from him."

I recognize the hiding of faces, and it doesn't look like cruelty when I do it.

Verse 4 goes on, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." The lesson suggests reading the chapter and putting "I" and "my" where Isaiah has "we" and "our." I tried it Sunday evening, after the last session, with Ben climbing on my back, and I got through about four verses before he needed a cracker. The word that stayed with me was "carried." Nothing in it says the sorrow gets explained first.

I'd be careful about telling a child that Jesus feels exactly what she feels, because Isaiah doesn't put it that way. Alma 7 comes closest. It says the Savior will take upon him our infirmities "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people." He knows, and that is why he comes.

What happened after that

I put my hand on the quilt where I thought her foot was and after a while said "I'm right here," once. Lily said "my stomach feels heavy" and I said "that sounds heavy," and that was about all of it. She didn't cheer up. She asked me to stay a little longer and I did, and when I left she was still awake, looking at the ceiling.

Caleb at eleven would want me out of the room entirely.

Ben at almost three wants to be held while he yells, and the one time I tried sitting quietly beside him he climbed into my lap and licked my glasses, so that's a different post. I don't have a method for either of them yet.

If a child is sad for weeks, or stops eating, or says things that scare you, call the pediatrician and a counselor.

I'm not against the lesson, either. There's a time for "here's what we know about the Savior" and "here's what we can do tomorrow." Last month I wrote about a girl who asked if a small lie undid her baptism, and that conversation went the way it did partly because I let it be quiet first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do you do when your child is sad and you can't fix it?

Sit near them and stay put. Don't ask three questions in a row, and keep the silver lining in your pocket until they bring one out themselves. If they say "I don't know why," take that at face value. Plenty of sadness has no reason you could solve at bedtime.

What does "acquainted with grief" mean in Isaiah 53?

It says the Savior knew sorrow personally, in His own experience, which is how Isaiah 53:3 describes Him. Verse 4 says He "hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." Read the rest of verse 4 slowly, though, because it also reports what people thought about Him at the time, and verse 5 gives the real reason for His suffering.

How long should I sit there?

Longer than feels natural, and then a little less than they'd like, I think. You're not trying to outlast the sadness. Leave when the child's breathing changes or when they ask you to, whichever comes first.

Does Jesus understand my child's sadness?

I believe He does, and Alma 7:12 is the verse I'd point to. I wouldn't tell a child He feels it just the way a parent does, since that goes further than the text. What I can say is that He isn't far away from it.

One more thing

Lily woke up a little quiet and ate two pieces of toast, which for her is normal. I don't know if the sadness is gone and I'm not going to ask her at breakfast to account for it.

Library books are due Thursday. I put Caleb's two on top of my car keys so I'd trip over them.

with love, Melissa