Maybe I shouldn’t have bribed him. But maybe it was just what he needed.
Today the first grade boy that I babysit every afternoon walked up to me on the playground in a rare demeanor of genuine hurt and worry.
“Miss Sarah, I really want to play football with everyone, but I don’t think they’ll let me because I’m too little.”
My reply was obviously that if he never asks he’ll never know.
And then it came. The most precious face and the sweetest voice that spoke of fear of rejection.
So you wanna know what I did? Yeah. I bribed him. I told him that if he could muster up the courage to ask to play football, I’d let him stay up 10 minutes later than his bedtime.
After a few facial exercises and a LOT of thinking, he went up to the 4th grader who had chosen teams and asked very quietly if he could play. Mid-play.
Poor kid. They just ignored him and he came straight back to me.
The thing is, though, that the kid that came back was a completely different person than the kid that left. He was courageous, and a little more confident, and most importantly, when he walked back to me, he was a kid who knew that rejection wasn’t fatal. The world didn’t end, and neither did his life.
I wish so badly that I had that kind of knowledge. I wish that bribing myself with staying up for 10 extra minutes (or with going to bed early) would fix this awful, paralyzing fear of rejection…even if for only one question. I wish that 10 minutes would give me the confidence to put my heart on the line to even the most scary of people.
But then I guess that’s a lesson he hasn’t learned yet. That 10 minutes isn’t always worth the heartache it could bring.
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