Green Day and the expectations of a child

Ian got a Green Day t-shirt for keeping his eye patch on for 4 hours straight. He's got ambliopia and the patch is helping the weak eye get better...
Anyhow, he got the shirt in the middle of Mid-Winer break (he's 6) so he wanted to save wearing it til school got going again. 5 days go by and the 6 year olds expectations of the reactions grew. The day came and he proudly wore the shirt outside his fleece jacket so the jacket stayed on all day and he said was a "little hot"...thing is, one boy said that wasn't even Green Day on the shirt and one of his good friends didn't say anything about it...he tells me this with tears in his eyes...it broke my heart. He was so excited to show off his cool new shirt and it didn't pan out for him...
and i used to think going to work everyday was hard. Parenting tears people apart if they let it. Teach your children well, but let them suffer to toughen them up for the real world??? If ida known that its not the raising the kids, teaching them how to read, good manners and such....that the pain was seeing one's child suffer and knowing theres nothing one can do is truly the most difficult ting ive ever had to deal with. I can't imagine what he was going thru all day....