Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash

Trigger Warning- Child Abuse

I want to tell you a story of a little boy, who only knew feelings of sadness and anger. He would sit in his room and cry because his parents were mean to him. They were always yelling at him and their hits would land hard upon his head, back, and butt. There was never a moment of peace as their words were hammered home. “Shut up you idiot. You are nothing but a bad boy. You’re a mistake.” This was his life; this was his world.

He thought to himself, is everyone’s life like this? When he watched movies he would see boys who had friends, boys who went on adventures, and boys with kind parents. Why were the movies so different from his life? He didn’t understand.

One day he asked his teacher why the boys in the movies were never hit like he was? The teacher asked him to explain what he meant. So he lifted up his shirt and showed the teacher his back. He was taken to the principal’s office where he sat in a big chair. The staff looked at him as he sat there all alone. The teacher came over and told him it was all okay and asked if he was hungry? All he could think about was how his butt was going to hurt when he got home.

He talked to a nice person with a shiny badge, who said it was all going to be okay. Then some more people came and talked with him. They said it was time to go and that’s when he started to cry. He knew he was going to be in trouble with his parents, yet he didn’t end up at home. No, he ended up at the teacher’s house. She said, “You will stay here for a while.”

She introduced him to her son, who was the same age. The son asked if he wanted to play Legos. After being there a few days, he asked the teacher why she never hit her son.

She said, “I’ve spanked him a few times, but mostly I explain why we don’t do certain things. It seems to work. In this family, we work on expressing our emotions and talking through our feelings. That way we can gain a better understanding of each other.”

The boy said, “I didn’t know that there were other feelings besides sadness and anger.”

The teacher said, “There are lots of different feelings and we will teach you all about them.”

— Nicole Barden 6/18/2021

Originally published in Blue Insights on Medium