Have You Ever Spotted A Kid With A Tiny Heart Drawn On Their Wrist? Here’s What It Means!

Everyone is secretly fighting something behind closed doors—whether it's an abusive relationship, stress at work, or a health issue. There is no way to know what these things are when you cannot see them, and it makes it challenging to help or to be considerate of those issues without a sign. That is why children around the US began to sport tiny hearts drawn on their wrists.

While they may initially look like simple doodles, those hearts represent something more important. So if you ever see a kid walking around with a tiny heart drawn on their wrist, you do not have to wonder anymore about what that means.

It’s significant to remember that we all have our battles. Whether it’s money trouble or a family member fighting illness, everyone knows what is like to experience the difficult parts of life. And nobody knows that better than Liz Petrone.

Being the owner and operator of Lizpetrone.com, she often blogged about her life in New York. Never wanting to shy away from the personal, she frequently talked about her family and her kids. However, one recent post really caught people’s attention.

Liz started her blog to share deeply personal stories. Therefore, it was no surprise when she started to post about her son, Luca. It was when people who read her learned all about the reason why she drew a heart on her son's hand recently that they could not help but feel touched.

Having battled with her own mental health, Liz has openly blogged about postpartum depression, a condition that she faced after giving birth to her third child. She also often stressed the integrity of National Postpartum Depression Awareness Month. As one of her post's read:

“We need to keep talking, even when we don’t want to, even when it’s unsightly or embarrassing or uncomfortable… Because one in eight women suffers from postpartum depression or anxiety following the birth of a child.”

As an advocate of being open about one's mental health, the mother noticed Luca exhibiting signs of anxiety. With that, Liz blogged about one especially difficult time in his life.

Not long ago, while she was waiting for a late-running school bus, Liz noted that her son grew quiet. As they both waited, Luca became noticeably anxious. After a while, his bus arrived, and he was off to school. Nonetheless, Liz could not shake the memory of her son’s obvious anxiety.

As time progressed, she noticed that Luca’s anxiety had only increased; she naturally started to post regularly about it. She hoped that, with the Christmas break approaching, Luca’s anxiety would subside—but it didn't.

A few weeks later, Liz felt that her son had reached a breaking point. When his school bus pulled away, she could see him crying. She could not sit idly by any longer; she needed to do something.

The next day, Liz thought of an idea. She grabbed a pen, she took Luca’s wrist, kissed it, and then marked the spot where her lips touched his veins, where they share blood. She then drew a tiny heart in that spot and told her son:

“I know it’s hard sometimes out there—I want you to look at this heart every time it feels like too much. I want you to look, and I want you to remember that no matter what happens out there, someone is here waiting for you to come home. Someone loves you.”

As her son got onto the bus, all he did was stare at the heart on his wrist. “Maybe what we all need to remember is just that simple,” Liz wrote on Facebook. “Maybe it’s not a fix, not by a long shot, but it’s a comfort just the same, and comfort can go a long way when you know someone loves you.”

It was not long before Liz’s post started to attract outside attention. The Facebook page “Love What Matters” shared her story, and soon enough, parents everywhere started to replicate her idea and share their own heartwarming stories with her.

“Thank you for this. My sweet first grader has a heart so big it cripples her at times. I have had to pick her up from school when it becomes too much,” one mother named Amanda Zapotochny replied. “I am looking forward to trying this tomorrow with her.”

Liz was amazed by the responses to her post. “Thank you so much for sharing this message, Love What Matters! To all my mamas (and papas) with anxious little ones, I feel you. Also, I swear these kids are going to change the world with their big hearts. We just gotta get them there,” she wrote.

Liz’s idea was not the only one of its kind, either. A British mother called Louise Mallet had been doing something similar with her own son called the “hug button.” “I could tell he was feeling a little emotional this morning so we had a chat and came up with the idea of having a heart each and if we pressed it, it sent a hug to the other one,” she wrote online.

Louise’s son, Max, found great comfort in his little hug button. “I pressed it for a long time mummy, but I didn’t cry,” he once told her after school. Her story was then picked up by the Facebook page The Motherload, and soon parents everywhere were doing the same with their children.

In another example along these lines, a parent wrote on the Tamworth, U.K.-based Facebook page Relax Kids Tamworth: “My daughter gets quite anxious in various situations; one of them being on rainy days at school last year. As much as she was supported and reassured, she still struggled to cope.”

“I drew a heart and a sunshine on my hand and explained to my daughter that if I drew one on hers too, that at any time she felt sad or worried during the day she could look at it and know that I had one on my hand too,” the parent wrote. “My daughter’s tears literally turned into a smile immediately.”

In the meantime, Liz continues to blog about her son's struggles with anxiety and mental health. “You are not alone. Even when it feels like it,” she recently stated. Hopefully, ideas like this one will help to comfort parents and kids everywhere!

Unfortunately, numerous children suffer from anxiety. But hopefully, with support from their parents, they can get through their issues without a problem.

Reference: Boredom Therapy