If you don’t speak up for yourself, who will?

This Sunday my kid is supposed to go to NYC with his grandmother for the Greek Independence Day Parade. He was excited to go up until yesterday.

Yesterday his grade went on a field trip at an outdoor classroom to learn about the ecosystem at a local lake. Four bus rides and about an hour on a boat really triggered his motion sickness, and on the way home, he realized that the trip to NYC is on a bus. 

The prospect of putting more time in on a bus was not appealing after all the school trips he’s taken over the past couple weeks, and he told me he was reconsidering his decision to go to NY. 

I agreed – bus rides can get dicey if you’re sensitive to motion like we are (this is actually the reason I’m not going), and it’s his decision whether he goes or not. 

Then he thought of his grandmother – how disappointed she’d be if he didn’t go. “She was so happy when I said I would go with her, and now I don’t want to go. She’s going to be upset.”

I love that he’s got that empathy, but it was time for a lesson in speaking up for himself and not taking responsibility for someone else’s feelings.

I did that way too much growing up, and well into adulthood. 

Pushing aside what you need in order to make someone else feel better is a recipe for resentment & codependency. Even worse, if you do this for a long time, you end up believing *you* aren’t as important as someone else, which is bull.

So, even though it’s hard and he doesn’t want to see his grandmother feel bad, we will be talking with her together about this. I’ve got his back, whatever he decides to do, no matter how my mom feels about it. She’s an adult. Her feelings are hers & hers alone. 

He’s got to develop his own sense of self and I’m not about to encourage him to go along with something that’s going to make him feel sick just to keep someone else happy.