One night my daughter couldn’t sleep. There’s been a few of those lately. I think “we” parents can too quickly overlook the intensity that children feel over things. Sometimes divorce isn’t so easy to take: a new life, house, and family order. Who are her parents anyway? Who is she?

We all know that pesky little ego begins it’s march into our brains around 5 - 7, perhaps earlier. We start getting attached to all those labels we’re given and begin to give them meaning. Whereas, when a child is two, you can call them a “bubble-headed-goofball” and they aren’t going to understand all the ramifications of those words.* It’s not very nice, but it passes without sticking. I watch Coco get older and deal with bad days, name calling, and a small circle of kids that just don’t behave all that well. Basically the same circle we form as adults, more or less.

I remember being almost mortally wounded at the names kids would call me. Clutzy - because it rhymed with my name. One time in 6th grade, one of the boys in my class called me over to his desk after we’d gotten our class pictures back.

Everyone looks good in this picture except you, he told me pointing my photo. You’re hair is greasy, and you’re ugly.

Can you tell I’ve carried that with me for years? And the bag of others: skinny, fat, short, slow, never going to be able to write -you’re bad at English! - poor, and that overbite!

What’s going to change in the world? Maybe the tools I can give my children to lessen the blows and not react to those words that are really people’s unhappiness about themselves. So when Coco came into my room, I told her the story of the names kids called me. I made fun of myself, and it helped her see that with a little humor and distance those awful words and crazy thoughts in our heads can go away.

When Mr. Ego comes around and tells you to believe all those things kids say, you know what you can do? I said.

What?

Look over on your shoulder, because that’s where he hangs out, and give a quick blow and say: Bye Bye Mr. Ego! And watch him tumble right on his bum and fly away.

He lives on you shoulder?

Well it’s really in your brain, but when he comes out he sits on your shoulder because it’s harder to see him, I said. Then, when he’s gone try saying this: I am.

I am?

That’s it Coco. You are.

I am what?

You just are.

I am?

You are a beautiful beaming light and beating heart and pulsing breath and that is.

I am, she said a tad more resolved and looking sleepy. She blew the ego away over her shoulder and rolled in bed with laughter.

The next day when I went up to my office, she’d made me a snow flake and wrote: Mama I am.

It’s still going to be a ride for my daughter. And I worry that my son, who looks “different” and has special needs will suffer even more at the cruelty that we all harbor inside ourselves. But maybe when the dog bites and the bee stings we can say those two words: I am. And it’ll feel like a little nip rather than a huge bite out of soul that never heals.

*Of course the case of real verbal abuse changes a child no matter what age and a something that must end immediately.