Vacation Days Deferred
Snow days! How I loved them as a kid: dawn gifts wrapped
in white and promise! But then came June when the first day of summer vacation
kept being postponed to make up for those long-gone winter holidays. Pity this
year’s students with their flurry of Arctic days off.
How do we help our kids cope with this summer’s
disappointment? How do we ourselves deal with the ache of special times
deferred by life’s quirks?
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1) Name the disappointment.
2) Allow self to grieve for the postponed or lost
pleasure.
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3) Offer soothing words of kindness and compassion.
4)Make sure some positive experience does take place,
even if it’s not quite as wonderful as the one lost. Yes, we do need to be
realistic – life’s not always a bowl of cherries, but that doesn’t mean we have
to be satisfied with just the pits.
If you find it hard to empathize with yourself or others
over life’s losses, you may be further depriving yourself of human connections
in coming up with Plan B. Call Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center at 515-274-4006.