Eight is Great...Mostly.

My baby turned eight this weekend...EIGHT!!  We had a really nice time celebrating on Saturday with our adopted family, the Collinses.  Liam Collins turned eleven on Sunday, so we just made a joint birthday celebration and had a fantastic time.  Emma says it was her best birthday ever even though we didn't have a big party with loads of kids and fuss... in fact, perhaps that is why it was the best birthday ever.  We were able to focus on celebrating the kids whom we love without worrying about all of the other birthday party dramas and details.

I love the person that Emma is becoming.  She has always been such a sweet and sensitive character, but growing up also means that there are some painful lessons to learn and some "mean girls" to be dealt with.  On several different occasions recently, Emma has been on the verge of tears after school.  Girls there have been doing some of the same mean and nasty things that they did when I was eight.  Clubs are formed that Emma is not allowed to be a part of, and she feels lonely and rejected.  Other girls are manipulative and threaten to tell the teacher lies about Emma if she doesn't do: a,b, or c.  She finds all of this appalling, and I find myself choking back tears at times when she tells me about her day.

Emma also tells me that she never cries at school or tells these girls that they have upset her because she doesn't want them to think they have power over her.  Did I mention she's eight?  When I watch her playing and creating and just being Emma, I think I would have loved to have had her as a friend when I was a little girl.  She is so clever and imaginative.  Of course, I'm not eight, and I'm not her friend.  I am her mother, and I am doing my best to nurture her self-esteem and help her navigate through this tough time. 

I know these are things that most everyone has to go through at some point, but my heart breaks for her.  I remember myself at age ten, and how I came home crying (what felt like) every night because I felt like I just didn't fit in.  Girls who had been my friends when we were six, were suddenly part of the "in crowd" and couldn't be bothered with me.  I was so lonely and distraught.  The next year, however, I started middle school and met my eleven year old soul mate, Jennifer Freeman along with several other cool girls who are still good friends.  Being excluded from the "in crowd" at the age of ten changed me for the rest of my left.  It changed me for the better, I believe.

Being excluded from The Gummy Bear Gang* taught me to appreciate real friends who loved me for who I was and not because we were members of the same social circle.  Being excluded taught me not to seek the attention or affection of those who didn't want to give it naturally.  Being excluded strangely gave me the confidence and the freedom to be myself and to feel proud of myself when I was different from the others.  I never felt like I was striving to follow the major fashion trends.  I have photographic evidence to prove it.  I didn't like the same music groups that everyone else liked.  I didn't spend my high school weekends drinking and smoking my troubles away... although once Jenny and I did steal a beer.  After we each took a sip, we poured the rest down the toilet.  Hmmm.... and there were also all of those late night cigars on the front porch, but I swear we didn't inhale.  I digress...

We all have painful experiences in our childhoods.  Kids are mean.  I'm sure I broke some hearts and bruised some egos in my day as well.  It is my hope that these experiences will help my Emma find herself and learn to embrace real friends and to sympathize with the under dog.  That is my hope.  It is my wish, however, that I could just take it all away.  I wish her life could be sunny and happy forever because it hurts me when she is sad.

" Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples."

 ~ J. M. Barrie

* Totally made up.  The cool kids didn't call themselves the Gummy Bear Gang... just for the record.