Roll the video tape, please.

Friends, I must share with you something very powerful that happened today. Ryan was using the video camera and was recording some Mario and Luigi toy adventures when he decided he wanted someone else to do the taping. I was smack in the middle of cleaning up a mess so I told him to ask Iain if he could help. Little did I know that Ryan was still recording. When he asked Iain for help, Iain said no and Ryan began to get upset. I called him back over to me and told him if he could hang on for 1 minute, I was almost finished and I would be happy to record him. Not good enough. Ryan was getting angrier by the second and then finally the recorder cut off and he was really mad. Blaming me for the video camera running out of memory. I tried to calm him down by offering to watch his movie and, as we sat there, it dawned on me that Ryan had recorded the whole event. It dawned on him, too. He could hear himself getting angrier and angrier and his eyebrows raised. He could hear my calm voice, trying to reassure and offer a solution to which he had an angry response. When the tape was over, he was very quiet. I asked him if he heard himself on the movie and he nodded yes. I asked how he thought I felt when he spoke to me like that and he quietly answered, “Not very good,” and got up and left the room, seeming incredibly sad. I waited for a moment and called his name. When he didn’t answer, I went up to his room and found him, under the covers, face down on his pillow, crying his little heart out. I curled up next to him and asked him what was wrong and, sobbing, he said,”I’m very upset with myself!” Why, Ryan? “Because I wasn’t nice to you, Momma. I was talking very mean.” And he cried and cried while I hugged him, amazed at how inadvertently, he had gotten a view of himself when he’s mad, and he did not like it. We hugged for a very long time, and I reassured him that everyone gets mad, that I wasn’t upset with him, and that he was loved very much, and eventually he felt better. I, on the other hand, was rocked to the core by this development. It’s not going to change his behavior overnight but it was powerful to see his reaction to the manner in which he treated me. It was unexpected for both of us and we were both incredibly moved by it. I’m still almost moved to tears as I sit here writing this post. It will be interesting to see what happens in the days to come.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Tomorrow, I’m cooking my turkey and fixin’s since my sister did all the cooking for our family dinner this year. Gotta have my own leftovers, yo! Come back and I will have posted something new about the goings on this weekend!