I learned how to get through to my son

My son Danny has always been very sensitive and shy. In my family growing up, my brothers and I were raised to be men. We do the men chores like garbage and cleaning the gutters and lawn, snow. We do men sports, football, wrestling. If we cried we went off and cried alone so no one would see our tears. We don't show fear. Dad taught us this.

Mom taught us to treat ladies with respect and yet be a man and keep your place as a man in a relationship, in other words you wear the pants not her.

My son never really liked sports, he is 4 going on 5, but when my brothers and I were his age, we had an interest. He doesn't want to do the guy stuff I grew up doing like play catch or basketball. He is real shy and he stays to himself. 

I was running late from a meeting today and I could not pick him up on time for school. I called Joanna and asked her to pick him up.

 When I got to her house to get him, he ran and hid under her coffee table and he told me he was not going home with me. When I asked him why, he said because I never let him put a picture he drew on the fridge. 

Joanna pointed over to her fridge and I saw my son had drawn some pictures and she taped it all up on the fridge.

I thought to myself, yeah I never did put any of their stuff on our fridge. when he brought art and stuff home from school I would put it away in a file. I never put his stuff up to look at. I started to feel reall bad, because I never saw Danny act  like this. He

never threw a fit about leaving someplace when I would go to pick him up like from his grandmas or his uncles. I never saw him not want to leave some place.

He held on under the table and would not let me take him out.

I saw he was real upset and I did not want to yank him out to make him cry more.

Joanna asked me to wait around and we would watch tv and just tell him to come out when he was ready he wouldn;t have to leave yet. I still had to pick up Claire, so I left to go get her and come back.

I do not know what Joanna did exactly but when I came back, Danny had his coat on and he was real nice and he was ready to go. He gave me a gift bag with all his pictures in it and asked me if I would put them on our fridge at home.I promised him I would. 

When I got home and got Claire and Danny settled. I got a roll of tape and let Danny put his pictures up on the fridge. He gave me a real big hug and told me Thank You. I told him he did not have to tell me thank you, this was his house and he could put his pictures up when he wanted to. He told me I thought you did not like my pictures because you take them away and I never see them. I took Danny to my desk and showed him all of his pictures I filed.  He asked me if he could take them and stick them up in his room and I gave him the file and he went in his room and got busy. I peeked at him through the hall and I saw him singing and putting up his pictures. I never saw him so happy. I never heard him sing like that. He sounded so happy. 

I realized today that not all boys can be raised the same, doing art makes Danny happy.

I want to take some time and get to know what my son likes instead of trying to push on him how I was raised, I see its not the right way for him to be happy. In my family men did not really talk about feelings, but now I am going to take time to talk to Danny about his feelings. I feel like I should have done that a long time ago.

I feel like Danny and I really got close today. He wasn't running and trying to hide in a corner. it was nice to see him real happy and smile.

I called up Joanna and I asked her what she did to calm Danny down. She told me that she told him that he could come over there and draw afterschool whenever he wanted, she said she told him his pictures were very special and I would want to look at them everyday at home and he should give it to me in a gift bag and it would be his gift to me.

It is my gift. I was wondering what I was going to do to get through to him and all the time he knew.