Sensitive boys

It is tough to be a sensitive boy living in our world.  When I googled "sensitive boys", an image that came up was this:



That's Jeff Buckley.  If I google "sensitive boys" in my own brain, the image that comes up is this:

Those are my boys: Tad and Coen. 

Having a sensitive husband means this: I get love letters still after seven years of marriage and ten years of being together. It means having a partner who is willing to sit down with me and talk out an issue or a worry.  It means having the father of your children really empathize with their feelings. (Sometimes it can be annoying when the empathy goes as far as to be concerned with the comfort of a shirt which I have picked out for Lucy and is super adorable but Tad does not think is 'cozy enough')!

Having a sensitive son means having a boy who will sit and have a conversation with you... Like the conversation we had the other night.  It means seeing your little boy cry over the lyrics or the music of a song and feel proud that he has such depth of understanding at age eight, even at age three...

We had our parent/teacher conference yesterday with Coen's teacher and talked about about his sensitivity.  This is the hard part.  I sometimes watch Coen go up to his friends all needy-like and say "Will you play with me?" And of course that kind of demeanor usually breeds answers like "No! You can't!" which sends my son into tears, further pushing the others away from him.  I try to tell him to be cool.  "When kids say that you can't play with them" I say, "Just be cool. Just say, whatever dudes! I don't care! I'll go play with someone else!"  I snap my fingers a little and get a curled lip going to show him how cool he can be.

Yeah right. I have never, nor will I ever be able to muster that kind of cool. I, too, see a group of moms clustered on the playground and have the urge to go to them, hat in hand and say "Will you guys play with me?"  I have no idea how to be cool, so how can I tell my kid to!

This is not to say that Coen does not, at times, turn into a testosterone filled, rubber band shooting, antagonizing wonder.  He can do that with the best of 'em.  But at his core, he's a sensitive boy.  And that's okay. Sensitive boys grow up to be sensitive men.  My very favorite kind.

I am not necessarily a Jeff Buckley fan, but since he came up on my google search.  I"ll give you a senstivity-related Jeff Buckley quote to end this post.


"Just feeling is a subversive act. Expressing it is rebellious."

Word up, Jeff Buckley.