Gut Feeling

There was a message on my phone from my 7-year old, who asked about a play date with one of the kids from his school. I called him up and we made the arrangements. Two hours later there was a new message, if I would please come pick him up from school.

At the school, his teacher spotted me and drew me to a side. She said:

“I want you to know that I praised your boy today. He went through all the trouble of setting up a playdate with Marcus  and after a while, your son came up to me and said: “I have a bad feeling in my stomach and I don’t think I want to go home with Marcus after all”. And I just want you to know that I encourage children to listen to what their gut is telling them!”

Startled, I thanked her. Marcus is a 3rd grader, while my boy is only a 1st grader – playing with the older boys is a big thing. I cannot tell you what a proud mommy I was at that moment. I know from bloody experience how costly it can be not to listen to your gut feeling. Knowing that he had the courage to go through with canceling after the hassle of arranging the thing in the first place – and the potential embarrassment that might follow from canceling a play date with an older boy for no apparent reason; it is the way it should be.

My boy is a sensitive child. In him, I recognize the child I was too, struggling with being overwhelmed by emotion and having such a fine-masked web of intuition and emotion that catch more things than meet the eye.

The boy’s father, Hubby, is of a different breed. You know how you sometimes look at a person and mumble quietly to yourself: “THAT was the sperm that won?” Well, not with him. He is the finest pedigree, the culmination of generations of academics and thinkers. We are as different as night and day. I decide a matter based on my emotions – he thinks his way to a decision. (Not that I don’t think and he doesn’t feel – Meyers Briggs worked extensively on describing different personality types; You can get a brief overview here.)

This difference in us manifests in a multitude of ways. When we bought our house, he made his mind up based on lots of calculations, he measured the distance to the nearest schools, researched the municipal tax-rates of the area and looked at the drawings of the house, furnishing it armed with ruler and an erasable pen.

I simply had a good gut feeling. I liked the “feel” of the house, I imagined how our children would play on the lawn, I looked forward to kneading a bread on the marvelous marble kitchen counter. Basically, the house had me at hello because there was lavender bushes out front. I like lavender, okay?

My thinker-husband once told me about his amazement when he learned that when someone said they had to “check what my gut is telling me”, he thought that meant that they had to think really hard about it. I laughed about that for weeks.

Isn’t it wonderful how we are different? I am very grateful that my son has a teacher who encourages him to be who he is.