A Child Needs To Be Happy, Not The Best

Adrián is a child of the 21st century. She has two parents who work hard, in her words “countless hours a day” to pay for the house they live in, the cars they travel in and the few vacation days they take each year. She also says she wouldn’t mind having a smaller living room, a car that was a little slower with no leather seats, and a more uncertain future in exchange for spending a little more time with her parents.

But not with his parents from now -tired, stressed, worried and inaccessible-, but with his parents from before -attentive, willing, smiling, loving and consistent-. He misses them, but has no idea how to tell them. In addition, Adrián has observed that the elderly, not only their parents, do not express what they feel either. He suspects that there is a connection between the emotional world and words, but no one has taught him exactly how it works. They are all suspicions in which you feel insecure.

Adrián is a busy kid

Adrián is also a child who does not play, unless he does not play to play and with no other intention than to have fun and have a good time. Since his sister was born, his parents consider him older to delegate responsibilities to him, although small according to the type of concerns they express. This is the only thing that generates in him even more insecurity, but he does not know how to tell them either.

In addition, the little protagonist of this article does not have a free hour a day, the question of what he does or does not want to do is restricted to weekends when he is lucky and his mother works. They are the weekends that he spends with his grandparents. They intend to compensate in two days for all the freedom that their parents restrict them. Although the little one has not told them, they have the wisdom that experience gives and they intuit how it feels; However, these abrupt changes to Adrián also confuse him.

During the week, the mornings and afternoons are full of colors. In fact, this year he had to repeat color for more than one activity because in his case there was not a wide enough color to differentiate his entire agenda. Thus, the English of the school this year has the same color as the English of their private classes and the same happens with music and the conservatory, or physical education and their soccer training. Even this year he has had to wear yellow, which he likes even less than kicking a ball, for Chinese classes.

Adrián no longer protests about football, at least he doesn’t do it directly: because he doesn’t know how to do it like someone older and he doesn’t want to do it like a child, but above all he doesn’t want to disappoint his father. He already feels that he does it when he does not play well or when that day he has to sit on the bench, he does not want to imagine how he would feel if one day he told him that his dreams were different.

Adrián is a silenced child

On the contrary, Adrián loves to read. He fondly remembers the stories his father used to tell him as a child. Some read them and others made them up. He especially liked the seconds because his father knew him so well and knew exactly what he would like the intrepid boy who had just escaped through the window to do. In that complicity, now lost, he fell asleep with a smile.

When his father added a new one, that night was special. In addition, the next day Adrián was secretly doing something that we can now reveal : he wrote them on paper because he wanted his best friend to enjoy them too. It was his way, among many others, of trying to make up for the sadness he saw in his eyes for not having met his own father. He also did it for another reason: one of his neighbors had Alzheimer’s and Adrián had witnessed him lose his memory.

Adrián knows more languages ​​than many children his age, he is good with the piano, he masters equations when his classmates are still fighting with negative numbers and he knows how to carry out all the minimal care that a little sister needed. Adrian is also a sad child and he is also aware that he is sad because one day he was happy, he was immensely happy. A happiness that her parents have sacrificed for a future that no one knows will ever come. Worth?