I’m continually amazed at how resilient my sons are. As much as I would like to take credit for instilling it in them, I think it’s a natural tendency in children. Sure, they get upset and throw tantrums like any other six and four year old. But, they recover quickly.
Luckily, my sons haven’t experienced any major losses in their lives. The losses they’ve experienced are family pets. Most recently was my oldest son’s beta fish.
Catboy died last week, after a fun two years with our family. My son picked him out for his fourth birthday. It was his first pet all on his own.
My husband found the fish in the afternoon and we texted back forth. We were both concerned about how he would handle it. In all honesty, my husband fed the fish every day and I cleaned his tank. But Catboy was my son’s fish. And he took great pride in that fact.
When we got home and settled, I reminded him that Catboy hadn’t been very active recently. His instant response was to ask if he’d died. My husband and I entered the conversation trepidatiously.
This was not a conversation either of us was looking forward to having any time soon. Want to know what happened next? He shrugged it off. We held a funeral for Catboy before we flushed him down the toilet. Our son said something nice about him. And then he moved on.
Now, I know a pet fish dying is much different than a pet dog. But each of these small instances, from a bad day at school to losing a first pet fish, helps build up his resiliency. So when he’s inevitably faced with a much tougher situation, he’ll have the skills to face it. And to overcome it.
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