Hurt doesn't discriminate ...

Hurt is something I think everyone can agree on. It comes in all ages and it comes in all sizes. Hurt doesn’t discriminate by age, skin color, ethnic group, or by sex. Hurt means pain, plain and simple, and it’s either physical or emotional.

When our children are small, it’s so easy to fix the hurts. Most boo boos are physical and only require a little rinsing with water, some of Mommy’s ‘red paint’ (Mercurochrome), and a bandaid to keep all the blood inside so it won't all run out. Add a gentle kiss, and it’s simple to be a hero when our children are small.

As our children get older, their hurts get bigger, too. These hurts are based more on feelings than the fall-down-go-boom hurt. As parents or grandparents, our job becomes more difficult. Hurt takes more of our time and require a lot more patience. We have to add other elements that aren’t needed with ordinary boo boos. We have to explain things: Not everyone we meet will like us. Other kids don’t always play fair. The teacher is human, too, and yes, she might just have a favorite student that isn't your child. We also have to teach the child how to help himself make things get better.

It’s harder to explain that kind of hurt, too. They want to know why. Why don’t some children play fair? Why would someone say or do something to hurt them when they didn’t do anything to deserve it? It becomes even more challenging, when teaching children that two wrongs don’t make a right and it’s wrong to retaliate. As grownups, it’s more difficult helping these hurts get better, and it’s not as easy to be the hero any more, either.

We spend their entire childhoods telling them to be nice; be truthful; don’t hit; do unto others the way you want them to do unto you; if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all; and my personal favorite, and the one my mother used a lot when we were growing up: Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.

When you think about it, hurt really doesn’t get any easier with age either. It doesn’t matter how old we are, it still hurts to have someone say something mean to us, or about us behind our backs, especially when it isn’t true . It also hurts not to get that promotion we’ve been working our butt off for. And it really hurts when the person we love, loves someone else.

As a grownup, I don’t pretend to understand the ‘why‘, which makes it even more difficult trying to explain it to a child. Maybe we could tell them the people who hurt them are so unhappy with their own lives that they need to make those around them just as miserable, or maybe that they’re trying to boost their own feelings of insecurity. What it comes down to is a desperate cry for attention. Negative attention, even though destructive and self-defeating, is still attention after all. No one, young or old, wants to be ignored.

In my humble opinion, sometimes the best thing we can advise our children or grandchildren is, “Say nothing at all. Just walk away.”