"I'm Sad"

My son is a month away from being 3 and in between activities or in a quiet moment he says ALL the time, “I’m Sad”. When he says that, I find myself trying to pick the pieces of my heart out of the garbage disposal. We try so hard to make everything good and healthy for him. I know that he is discovering emotions, but he really seems to be focusing on this sad thing. He will occasionally say when he is happy; he never says when he is mad or frustrated. I wouldn’t feel so guilty if he would express all the ranges of emotion.

In reaction to this new emotional development my husband and I have been talking about when we are happy and what makes us happy when we are sad. I try to direct our son to think about things that make him happy so that he can learn to deal with being sad. I acknowledge that he is sad, and try to make sure he knows its okay to be sad. He lives in a loving home, when we get home, he gets dedicated attention, on the weekends it’s all about him. He is not lacking for toys or educational stimulus, so I am completely confused about what this kid is so sad about.

It especially gets me when we are on our way to daycare. Even though he loves being at Miss April’s we will be driving and he says, “I’m sad”. And then I will ask, “Why?”, and he will reply, “I want to go back to home”. Yeah, me too! I wish I didn’t have to work and I hope that we can get things financially arranged so that I can stay home just for a couple of years or at least a job that is flexible with school hours. On top of that, what really gets me is he now is cognizant of the fact that he does not stay with me all day, and clearly would like to stay with me all day, and that really rips at my heart. But now, he is about to head into pre-school and he will not get to know what it is like with the two of us home together while he was little. Not that I am about to trade everything in to be a SAHM.

It’s times like these where I wish I could download his manual and fix it. I just want him to be healthy, happy, and well adjusted. Could he be doing this to get attention?