lowestoft_cookie-face-booboo-v_may-09.jpgIt’s tough being a little boy. All that mouth-bashing against the banister when you trip on the stairs and that flipping over your truck when you hit a rock and that clambering blindly into beds of stinging nettle…. Ouch! It’s enough to make a grown man cry. It certainly made my sons cry this week—every single one of them.

Even as I marvel at how my middle son doesn’t usually cry when he gets hurt, I am on a mission to help my sons understand that crying from pain is not ‘sissy,’ just as I’m on a mission to teach my sons to rush to their brother’s—or anyone else’s—aid when he does, inevitably, crash and burn. I think that lesson is seeping in good and well, and hallelujah for it! When one of my sons does a face plant or gets a mighty rug burn or just stubs his toe and starts lowestoft_elbow-booboo-d_may-09.jpgwailing, his brothers immediately drop what they are doing to run and help him. With all the cute fumbling awkwardness of small children, they hug and tug and pull at their fallen comrade, trying to comfort him and help him stand to recover. If hugging and tugging isn’t enough, they will rush about like crazed ants, grabbing the injured boys’ favorite toys, dolls, and blankets then rushing the goods over to the sobbing child. Then *heart tug* the sobber usually says through his teary, snotty drool, “Fank you.” Oh, it melts me! Even as I comfort the injured child myself, I pat his brothers on their backs and tell them what incredible brothers they are. You lowestoft_comfort-k-v-m_may-09.jpgcan see on their faces that they are soaking it up, and you can see in their quick and earnest actions that they are internalizing the message. Dare I hope—oh, dare I, dare I?—that this will become part of their personalities? That my sons will always be compassionate and responsive to others in need? That even as grown men their hearts will be as big and kind as they are now?

You know what? I do dare. I’ve always believed strongly in self-fulfilling prophecies, and even more importantly, I believe in these little boys and the unique connection they share as triplets. If that makes me Pollyanna, then Pollyanna I am. Although . . . do try to ignore the fact that Pollyanna fell off a roof and was paralyzed from the waist down, will you? That doesn’t work so well for my metaphor. I’m the pre-paraplegic Hayley Mills Pollyanna, okay?

Huh. I wonder if Pollyanna cried….