My son just turned nine months old and the last nine months has been such a big growth spurt – not just for him, but for me! Yesterday I just went to my second music class with him. I cried after his first class – not because anything bad happened and not because I was so moved by his musical genius.

Here’s how it went. About a dozen moms, dads, or couples circle around with our little darlings on our laps as the group leader takes a quick inventory of babies names and ages and launches right into the first introductory song where we’re all singing together incorporating each baby’s name.

My mind is off to the races. Will he….. interact with the other babies? Shake the shaker? Interact with me? Have fun? Will he love music and his mom and think fondly back on these memories for the rest of his life? Oh, look at that girl over there she can hold a beat already and bounces to the music and looks really happy. My child is crawling away and looking out the window. They must have trained her better with music since she was born. They were probably playing Baby Mozart. I meant to get those things and play them but I never did. In fact, I bet they have music going on in the house all the time. I should have played classical while he was in the womb. In fact, we never did read to him in the womb either. The neighbors did that with the newspaper. They will probably have a smarter child because of it. I hope I haven’t ruined his chances to be a genius.

The leader takes off on another song with hand puppets where she interacts with each baby one by one. Oh, she’s coming this way and he’s not paying attention. Those other kids are smiling or laughing. Maybe he’s going to be socially maladjusted because he hasn’t been exposed to other kids as much. What if I made a mistake having a nanny instead of daycare. Here she comes, come on Brian, come on. Smile at her. Do all that giggle cute stuff you do when you are home with me. Ok so he’s staring off into space and not even making eye contact. How can I let them know that actually he is the cutest baby in the world, that people comment about it all the time, that I fully expected him to be the class darling, that he must just be having an off day…..

Thank God for support and for my personal growth training at the Wright Leadership Institute. On the drive home, talking through all of this with a friend, I realize that I just had a lot of projection going on with my son. I was projecting on to him all of my little kid fears and disappoints.

He was just doing his thing in a new environment and checking it all out. I, on the other hand, was right back at the first day of kindergarten wanting to be liked, to make new friends, to be recognized, to feel special, and to belong. I was upset that the “teacher” didn’t ask my name, ask me to talk, have us introduce ourselves to each other, etc. In reality I’m a grown up kid still afraid of introducing myself to people, making friends, and facing rejection. Class #2 came and went yesterday and I’m proud to say that I took the initiative to introduce myself, ask people about themselves, and even offered to exchange information with one of the moms. I’m excited to see what the next part of my growth spurt will look like!