#Adulting

Sometimes I forget that my son has no concept of adulthood.  This is a good thing.  Many children all around the world and even in our own country have all too much of an idea of adulthood and the trials of being adults and losing their childhood.

My son is precocious, and so sometimes it's easy to forget he really doesn't "get" that the world is not made for kids.  He already made the comment that I think most kids make at some point, "There's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, why isn't there a kid's day?"  Especially because of the fact he's an only child, it's hard to help him distinguish the fact the world does not revolve around him.  It doesn't help either that he's really cute and easily becomes the center of attention wherever we go.  We go and volunteer at a convent/house where there are a bunch of Sisters who treat him like he's a rock star.  He knows where they keep the toys, they normally try to sneak him cookies and goodies, it's almost like going to a house full of grandparents.  That doesn't even account for the 4 natural grandparents he has who are also doting and can't help but make him feel like he's a king.

We try to balance things out and I try to teach him that the needs of others do sometimes come before ours.  I think he's slowly picking up on it, but the other day kind of made me laugh.

Unfortunately we have a car that seems like it's accident prone.  It's a good car, but it seems to be a dent and disaster magnet (That's why I like to drive it, as I tell my husband, "It's not a virgin anymore so it doesn't make me nervous that I'm going to be the one to wreck it")   Fortunately everyone has survived all events unscathed, but it has made two trips to the collision center when it's not even two years old.

My husband was sitting in traffic (on one of the few occasions I "let" him drive the car) when a presumed mentally ill man was shouting expletives and roaming through the street.  The green light didn't come quick enough and the man bashed in the side view mirror.  You know, the fancy one that also has blind spot detectors.  Fortunately, my husband was fine.  The man obviously needed help, but it wasn't a great area and my husband presumed the police wouldn't be able to do anything for the man other than what had already probably been attempted.  How do you explain this incident to a five year old?

"I'm sorry, we need to go to the collision center and wait around for a part to get fixed on the car.  No, the man wasn't bad.  No, it wasn't exactly an accident.  The man was sick and needed help controlling his anger.  You know when you can't control your anger and you accidentally break things?  Yep, that's what sometimes happens.  You break things, it's not exactly an accident, but we try to be understanding.  Yes, it's inconvenient" was along the lines of the conversation we had.

As we were waiting, because collision centers don't do anything without a wait, my son looks around and says, "Why don't they have a playroom?  I explain to him, as I'm looking around at people with their police reports, getting rental cars and in situations much worse than ours, "because collision centers are part of being an adult, not being a kid."  He didn't exactly understand but then was happy when I discovered the coffee machine also made hot chocolate.  We made three trips to the collision center and had a 4.5 hour oil change for our other car that week due to a series of events and promising a part when it was not there...

 I'm pretty sure after all the hot chocolate my son has had he is developing an affinity for the collision center.  I'm fine if for the next 20 years or more my son can associate collision centers with hot chocolate and nothing else. #Adulting- may it belong to me and not my kid for as long as possible.