What Your Kids Are Not Telling You

This question haunts moms: what does my kid really do all day?

No matter how many different way I ask my kids about their days, their hopes, their fears, and what makes them happy or hurts them, they don’t give great answers.

During the school year is the worst. At the end of every day, I feel like a therapist, trying to come with good questions: when did you feel brave today? when did you feel scared? did you laugh? was your teacher in a good mood?

Mostly they give one-word answers. But then they drop sudden bombs of news that make me think we haven’t been communicating at all: “Sarah’s parents are getting a divorce. She’s been crying about it. It makes me scared you’ll get a divorce.”

What? This has been going on? Why didn’t they say anything?

What else is happening they’re not mentioning? Are true horrors happening to them? What are they bottling up? Or what do they really enjoy, that they’re also not saying?

My fear was confirmed this week when the kids and I all went to VBS together. I helped in the twins’ classroom so I had the unique opportunity to see what they saw. And to witness all they don’t report to us.

VBS at Second Baptist is epic. Almost two thousand kids come to see the epic superhero/Bible presentation. All week I watched the awe on my kids’ faces as they sang, danced, screamed, and watched the larger-than-life superheroes. They were enraptured by all of it.

But when we got home, Mike asked about their day. “Fine!” they would say, distracted. “Boring,” one kid, who is going through a cynical phase, would say.

What? Where were the reports of Captain Cobalt and Spark? Where were the stories about the epic time they had just had? They had loved every minute of the day. This was the full report? Boring?

Then on Thursday, the biggest news of all happened. Our class brought the most friends to VBS and won an ice cream party with the superhero cast! All the super celebrities were going to eat ice cream with us!

The whole experience was fantastic. The ice cream was flowing, the superheroes were funny, and the kids were slack-jawed from the awesomeness of it all.  “They won’t forget this as long as they live!” I thought.

But a couple hours later, when we picked Nate up from his class, the kids didn’t report a word.

I expected, “I’ve met the superheroes!” or “What did you have for snack, Nate? Because I had ice cream!”

They had forgotten about the superhero party, shortly after it happened. At dinner, when Mike tried to prompt them to tell about their day, they mumbled nothing very exciting happened.

So, there you go, moms across the world. Our secret fears are true. Our kids are having awesome, important experiences all day, every day—and then forgetting them.

I guess we can only keep trying. When school starts, I’ll continue to ask probing questions. I’ll ask if anything is scaring them. I’ll ask if they’re treating everyone with kindness. I’ll ask what they learned in math class.

And now I also know to also ask if anyone ate ice cream with a superhero.