Letter To Ellie

Dear Ellie,

You did something pretty amazing yesterday and I want to tell you about it.

So a few weeks ago, you and your brothers were playing with the train set on the floor. Esme came over and toppled everything over and you yelled at her. You had sort of been off the whole afternoon, just tending to complain about things. When I ask you these days about school, you tend to give me the “I don’t want to talk about it” line, but just then you told me about something that had happened at gym. You didn’t hear the instructions for a game, so you didn’t know how to do the game right; you had to do it over, which made your team lose, and everyone laughed at you. You were crying as you told me and I felt so bad for you, at the thought of everyone making fun of you. You hate gym as it is and dread every Monday and Wednesday because of it.

We debriefed—you didn’t hear the instructions because everyone around you was talking too loudly. You tried to tell them to stop talking but that didn’t work. The situation was such that you couldn’t raise your hand to ask the instructions to be repeated.

We talked about how sometimes you have to let hurtful things slide off and not get stuck deep inside your heart. We even talked about how maybe God gave you this experience to help you understand how other kids feel hurt when they get made fun of or chided, like maybe even how you had yelled at Esme a few minutes ago. You said being made fun of at gym had only happened one other time this whole year, and that it happens to other kids too. You said you never laugh at anyone, but everyone else does. I made you promise that the next time this happened, you would go up to the kid and give him or her a hug.

Yesterday was a Monday; as usual I asked about gym but you didn’t want to talk about it. Then today you told me that yesterday, a second-grader had made her team lose, and everyone started laughing at her. But you went up to her and gave her a hug. And after that, everyone else in your class started saying sorry to her. You didn’t want to tell me about this right away because whenever you talk about it, you feel like you want to cry.

I am so proud of you! I told you I’ve never been more proud of you. You did something really kind, something that took courage. I love how your heart is so soft, Ellie, that things touch you so much, and that you can sense how other people are feeling and care about them. You let me tell Daddy about it when he got home from class tonight, and Daddy said the person most happy about what happened was God, who loves that second-grade girl just like he loves you.

Love,

Mommy