Planetarium Pitfalls

N went to our local planetarium last night along with his peers and leaders in his scout/church group. He arrived home, holding back tears, telling me about a "giant scale." All of the boys weighed themselves and then pressured N to get onto the scale. What could he do? He stepped onto the scale and was, unfortunately, the heaviest of the bunch. I think he is also the tallest, but that detail didn't reassure him at all. He said that he was the heaviest by "like 15 pounds." When I pressed him, it turns out that one boy weighed two pounds less and another 10 pounds less. But to N the difference was monumental.

My first question was, where were the leaders? My second thought was that there was no way I could expect them to anticipate everything. They probably didn't even think twice about the boys climbing onto the scale.

The devastation to N's spirits has been huge. He stood back while the other boys loaded up one of the vans to come home. He rode home, instead, with two other leaders and no boys. Thankfully, they threw in a stop to McDonald's which helped N's spirits a bit. He came home afterwards instead of playing street hockey with the boys. Today, he begged me to not let him ride bikes with the boys who had come to our front door asking.

He seems to be eating fine, but he is very anxious and sad. I'll need to watch carefully and hug him a lot.