The Kid is FINE

I had a realization today, as I lay underneath a hundred stuffed animals. It may have been the lack of oxygen. But regardless, I realized today that my kid is doing just fine.

After a morning where work-from-home and housework blended together into a giant blob of “how-is-it-already-lunchtime”, I made some lunch and left the kid in front of the television for fifteen minutes to go take a break upstairs. Relaxing pastime of choice for today: playing the piano. That’s a major benefit of working from home—a piano in the next room and a completely non-critical audience downstairs.

About thirty seconds in, footsteps pound up the stairs. “Daddy, are you taking a break from working?” “Yep, I thought I’d pl—” “Yay! We can play some hide and seek!” “I’d love to, but I need a bit of a break, so I’d like to play the piano for a bit longer.” “Oh. Okay…”

It’s hard to capture in print the disappointment I heard in my crestfallen kid’s voice as I turned him down. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t tend to give in to tantrums or whining, but this was different; the way his shoulders slumped a bit as he turned around to go back downstairs… it broke my heart. In those few seconds, my inner voice had a field day. Am I neglecting him? Is he not getting enough attention? He shouldn’t be missing out because he’s being raised by a single parent. You need to step it up. Bad father.

So I said, “You know what? Hide and seek is a good break too. Let’s do it.” “Yay! I’ll count first, you hide!”

And so I hid. You must understand, I don’t give any quarter when it comes to hide and seek. No half-assed hiding behind the bathroom door here, no, if he wants to find the Hide and Seek Master he’s going to have to earn it. So I settled on hiding in the corner where all the stuffies are kept, behind the armchair in my kid’s room. Bent ninety degrees at a point where skeletons don’t usually bend, and half smothered by an uncomfortable amount of plush, I cackled internally at the genius of my hiding place. And waited.

And waited some more. After a few minutes I had to excavate a breathing tube through the stuffies like some kind of crustacean inhabiting the sand at the beach. A few minutes later yet and it began to dawn on me how strangely quiet it had become. The window to unfold myself before my back seized permanently in its new position was closing quickly, so I got up (slowly, and with a variety of alarming noises) and went to go find my offspring.

He was happily playing at the kitchen table with some kinetic sand. “Hi, Daddy.” “Hi… I guess I won that round, then?” “Oh! I guess I forgot. Sorry!” And he went back to his sand.

He wasn’t being neglected, and he wasn’t dying to play hide and seek—he was fine. He just needed to check in, to see that I was there and that I was around if he needed him. When you’re little, sometimes the best way to do that is to issue a hide-and-seek challenge, since you don’t know how to say “I need to make sure you’re here if I need you, even if I don’t right now.” As soon as he confirmed that I was, his mind was free to be distracted by the nearest toy. The next time my inner voice kicks in, I can remind it about the dangerously high CO2 levels that build up underneath fifty pounds of stuffies, and respond with love and self-care front of mind—instead of mainly guilt.

Also, I did win that round of hide-and-seek, dammit. The master remains undefeated.