with Tara, my eldest yesterday. I suppose we haven't made it a secret that Fi had a medical condition and have spoken about it multiple times in front of the kids, but we have never pushed to have a formal discussion. In my experience children will show very clear signs of interest when they want to talk about something and if they have the capacity to process the information. We were at a playground and there were a few kids with Down Syndrome and 1 with autism, here is how the conversation went:
T: Mammy, are those children sick?
Me: Yes Tara, they have a medical condition (cannot use the word sick, not even with a 5 year old...)
T: Fi is sick too...
Me: Yes...
T: Did she catch it from me? (Tara has a really bad case of tonsillitis...)
Me: No, she was born that way.
T: What's her sickness?
Me: Her arms and legs are a bit shorter and her head is a bit bigger.
T: That's OK, when she is 4 or 5 her arms and legs will be long like mine.
Me: No they won't be, not when she is 4-5. When she is 8 and 12, she could have surgery if she wanted to, to make her legs and arms long like yours.
She then stared into space for what seemed like an eternity, and I suppose about 10 minutes speechless for a 5 year old girl IS eternity.
Me: What are you thinking about?
T: I am sad that Fi was born sick, why was she born sick?
Me: I don't know, I don't know, it's just something that happens sometimes.
1. I was totally unprepared for the discussion, it came out of the blue.
2. I wasn't sure about telling the surgery part...but I did, I felt that since she has raised the question really maturely, I owed her to tell her about that option to at her level.
3. My husband thinks that it was way too early and I shouldn't have said anything yet, and he may well be right, 5 is very early for digesting something like this. Then again, she will understand of it what she can, and it is probably a lot better to have an awareness from an early age.
4. I knew that I would be hearing a lot about this over the next few weeks and already this morning, when Fi was cruising along her cot, Tara said: Look mammy, her legs are so long already...
Petite yet fierce - Ramblings of a pathologically information hungry mother about hypochondroplasia, about rearing 3 girls in a foreign country and about all the random thoughts my sleep deprived and over-stimulated brain can come up with.
Great job Mama! I think you are doing the right thing by informing Tara now. She will be a big support system for Fi...your whole family will be..if she chooses surgery. I like to think of our family as a "unit" and we stand together. My boys are older so we sat them down and had "the talk" when I was pregnant. They've been awesome and I've even found them explain to their friends how Reid has achondroplasia. They do a pretty amazing job and I help out when I want to add something. :)
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