No Surprises

I was at a stoplight this week, waiting for the light to change, when BUMP! Someone rear ended me. The driver's companion got out after a few minutes, and he followed.

It turned out the driver didn't have insurance, and his companion asked me not to report anything because she'd already had a bad morning. Poor thing!

The couple asked if I wanted to pull over and talk, which I agreed to; but by the time I reached the parking lot, they'd gone. I hadn't gotten out of my car to get their license plates, so... here I am, without much recourse except to report the accident to my own insurance company and watch my rates go up.

I'm not bringing this up to whine, I promise. I'm bringing it up to talk about surprises, and how we handle them. More importantly, I'm interested in how we teach our kids to handle them. These days, I tend to feel a lot like the Radiohead Song, "No Surprises" -- because I've gotten more negative surprises than I wanted. Or at least, there are days it feels that way.

So, no thank you, accidents, no thank you illness, no thank you, deaths of good friends or family, no thank you, floods or divorces or burglaries. If you want to surprise me with flowers or something like that, by all means. But what do we tell our kids about the stuff nobody wants?

I'm not sure I did a good job of preparing my son for adversity; and like all of us, he has his share. Some people say the best you can do is model behavior when the bad surprises strike, to give your kid an example of how to handle things. That makes sense to me.

I remember being terrified as an eight year old when my sweater caught on a slide and I was stuck and started choking. Luckily my friend Carole climbed up behind me and broke the sweater's button to get me loose.

Carole was angry with me for getting stuck, but when I told her how amazing she was and that she saved my life, she calmed down and changed her mind. We both decided she was pretty terrific, and then forgot the whole thing. Or maybe we just pretended we did, which was okay too.

But yeah, there's going to be illness and accidents, bullies, breakups and tragedies. You can tell your kid life is like that, but until something happens, will they really understand? Maybe you can give them coping strategies when they're sad, like drawing, baking, writing stories or playing guitar.

You can also teach them to try and help people whenever possible (while telling them to be careful of strangers--this isn't easy, is it)? If I could tell a child anything, I'd say the one thing I regret - really -- is not being kinder when I could have been.

What that has to do with bad surprises, I don't know. I guess it's something we can control, instead of the surprises we can't. Maybe it holds a clue to how we interpret all the bad stuff. Because the surprises, good and bad, will always come. And the best way to handle them may be to share them, I think -- by helping each other through.

Here's a few thoughts I found from others on the web:

When Bad Things Happen
5 Tips on Talking to Kids About Scary News
How to Talk to Children About Difficult News

Girl: Alvaro


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