Yesterday I found myself to be in completely over my head as a parent.  The implications of what I was told by my six year old stagger me. 

Tyler was sitting on his bed pulling his socks on, stretching his socks on to be precise with his leg stuck out and dragging them half way up his calf.  He looked at me and said "Mom, I don't want to watch movies with fighting in them anymore."  Interesting.  Tyler has been alternately devoted to Star Wars and Transformers over the summer. "Ok, that's fine, can you tell me why?" "Because they give me nightmares and I'm afraid if I keep having nightmares that my head will explode. Not like really explode but part of my brain might stop working and I wouldn't be able to remember things anymore."  I looked at my brilliant little boy and loved him and did the only thing I could.  I told him that as far as I was concerned if he didn't want to watch them anymore then we wouldn't.  Simple as that.  I took a few minutes to establish which sorts of movies seemed to be the culprits (The Incredibles is fine, Treasure Planet is out) and we headed off to school. 

Later I found myself coming back to that short and seemingly benign conversation over and over.  Finally I realized what disturbed me so much about that short exchange.  Essentially my first grader had told me that he didn't want to watch scary movies anymore because he is afraid that if he continues to have nightmares he will lose his mind.  What do you do with that?  How do you respond?  The self-possession required to even recognize and give voice to such a complex fear boggles my mind. 

I suppose the first step is one I have already set in motion.  I called his dad and told him about what Tyler said and asked him to take some care in screening which movies Tyler watches and gave pretty much the same message to all of the family members involved somehow in his care.  This was the easy part.  Now I have to figure out how to give my son a childhood when all of a sudden I look at him and see someone more like an adult.