11-Year-Old Guilt

My 11-year-old son, "PacMan", helps his father mow their large 4.5 acre yard with a riding mower. As soon as I saw PacMan last night, I could tell he was very upset. When I asked him what was wrong, I could see tears start to well up in his eyes.

Have you heard the saying "breeding like rabbits"? There were a large family of rabbits in their yard yesterday and PacMan was having to swerve around to avoid mowing them down. Then he felt the tractor thump. He stopped and got off the tractor. He couldn't find anything, but he knew he'd hit a bunny. He stopped mowing and went to his room. He was devastated.

I took him out for ice cream (I'm a "Cool Mom" again…until I ask him to clean his room) and for a while, he forgot about the incident. I brought him over to my house (his Dad and I share custody) for the weekend - hoping he wouldn’t think about the events of the day. Not a chance. After his bath, he got talking about it. He said he'd gone out again later, looking for what he'd hit. He found only the bunny's head.

Ooohhhh…

I told him that meant the bunny didn't feel any pain. He said that he felt horrible that it had gotten chopped up, but guessed that didn't matter to someone who was dead. Then he added, "But it probably matters to his family.

Ooohhh…

He speculated that in 500,000 years, all animals on this planet would be extinct because we would have either eaten them all or run them down with our vehicles. He was making himself partially responsible for what he expected to be the eventual extinction of rabbits!! Poor kid.

I gave him some antihistamine last night, so he'd sleep. I remember the first time I hit an animal with my car (a squirrel). I was in my early 20s. PacMan is only 11. I don't think there's enough ice cream in the world to erase his guilty feelings or the memory of that little bunny.

Sometimes, motherhood is heartbreaking!