by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Recently my 6-year-old son was struggling to fall asleep as I sat beside him, holding his hand. Finally he said, “mom, I’m nervous.”

It’s break week from school here in Maine, and he’d taken a leap and signed up to attend a 2-day animal camp at the local humane shelter. He’s an introverted, wonderfully sensitive homebody who normally says no to new opportunities, especially ones that his sister can’t do alongside him (she’s too old for this camp).

But he’d already done one day of camp, and he had had no pre-camp jitters.

He rode home from the first day quietly, seeming to be holding it together in some way. Once he got some food in his system, though, he spilled out story after story of time with cats, dogs, and bunnies; taught us how to make cat toys out of pipe cleaners; and proudly shared a keychain he had made.

Then the bedtime admission: “I’m nervous.”

“But you seem to have had a fun day,” I said. “You did a lot of new things and learned a lot.”

He sniffled, the tears starting to flow. “Yes. And it was hard to be away from you and not be with my kindergarten friends. I was sad.”

He cried a bit, and I simply rubbed his back. Then he said, “And I am really excited to go back tomorrow. And I am nervous and I’m scared to go back. And I wish there were more than two days of camp. And I wish camp was over already.”

My son embraces the “and”s of life better than I ever did in my first forty years. In psychology we call the embrace of the “and” dialectical thinking. I’ve been intentionally working on developing that in myself for the past five years, forcing an “AND” where I’d usually put a giant “BUT.” It’s become mostly second nature by now. Mostly. AND those first few years of practice (I revised a “but” there!) were very challenging. It’s a habit I had to unlearn, and it’s been well worth it.

Thanks to that practice, last night instead of continuing to try to reconcile my child’s feelings the way I had while parenting my first child (sorry hon!), I simply said, “Well, that all sounds normal to feel.”

I let my son cry some more before I asked, “Is there any way I can help you?”

He rubbed his wet eyes. “No.” He took a deep breath. “I better get some sleep so I have energy for camp tomorrow.”

And he fell asleep quickly and bounded off to camp in his animal shirt today.

Here’s to embracing the many dialectics of life. As difficult as that may be.