The Orange Crayon

Emma has 8 crayons. She typically uses the orange or purple crayon. They seem to be her favorite crayons. One Saturday Aaron was coloring with Emma and accidentally broke about a half inch of the orange crayon off. Emma looked at it and kept saying over and over "Daddy broke it! Daddy broke it!" Periodically she would interject, "Why break it Daddy?" She would also come show me the broken crayon and tell me all about how Daddy broke it. This went on for about 20 minutes. We have never seen Emma go on and on about anything like this. Aaron felt so bad for breaking her crayon and that it obviously bothered her a significant amount.

I kept telling Emma it was OK and that she could still color with the crayon and she kept telling me that Daddy broke her crayon. So two weeks later, she still is talking about how Daddy broke her crayon every time she pulls out her crayons to color. This past weekend we had a break through. She said, "Daddy sorry so much!" and then later she pulled out the crayon again and said, "Its OK." It appears she made it through the seven stages of grief and has reached acceptance.