vickyducky

My son is going on a residential trip with his school next week. He'll be away for four nights, and he's really excited about it. They get to do lots of fun things like mountain biking and a night hike and I'm sure he'll have a good time, but even though I know it's completely irrational I can't help imagining 'Lord of the Flies' scenarios.

He's got a subluxation of his knee cap which he's having physio for, which includes some stretching and strengthening excercises he's supposed to do each evening. The other night while he was doing them I said "When you're away you don't have to do your excercises if you don't want to, if you think the others will make fun of you. I won't be cross if you don't want to do them in front of the other boys." He looked at me as if I were mad and said incredulously "I don't care what other people think! It's my health, they can say what they like!"

I spend a ridiculous amount of time worrying about what other people think of me, and by that I mean making myself feel terrible by imagining that all and sundry are thinking badly of me, particularly now I think about it, people who really don't matter at all. I'm so pleased that D has enough self-worth not to be like that. I just hope it lasts through adolescence.