It’s Not Fair

Last night while I printed out my daughter's materials for this week of school at home, my husband and children were on the trampoline in the back yard.   I heard them boisterously jumping and playing trampoline games.   At a certain point, something went wrong and the children started yelling, saying each had hit or punched or kicked with intent to wound the other.

My son ran inside and locked both doors to the basement so his sister and father couldn't come in.   I had him come over and I asked him to tell me what happened, using an understanding tone.   My son was mad because his sister was in near hysterics outside, saying her brother had intentionally kicked her in the face.

My daughter does this and sometimes her reaction is warranted.   My son is much more aggressive physically than she is and much of the time, his attention is unwanted by her—but not always.   She is just as shall we say "mean" as he is when the mood strikes her.  She, however, reacts emotionally and it gets our attention.   It is highly probable that my son gets in trouble more often than is strictly warranted.

There is a history of head trauma parent overreactions as well.   My son was upset.   He said to me, "Tell me the truth, if she got hit in the head with a mallet and I got shot in the head, who would you go to first?"   Serious question, right?  And it shows my son's underlying feelings of being less important to us.

I told him I would go straight to him, but that's because a gunshot would is much worse.   However, I said, he was right, we worry about head trauma to his sister because of how delicate her eyes are.  I told him things I thought he knew, but he didn't mostly because he was too young when it happened and because he doesn't care about adult conversations so even though I've told the story probably a hundred times in his presence, he's never paid attention.

He didn't understand how his sister's eyes were malformed from birth.   I explained how she had bad blood vessels in her eyes and compared it to when his arm goes to sleep.   His arm wasn't getting enough blood, so it wasn't able to function well.   In her case, her eyes were barely getting enough blood and any damage to them caused damage that would cause permanent loss of even more vision.

He didn't remember the time a single hit to the head (which we don't even know how happened) caused a bleed inside her eye and made her completely blind for two months.   I told him this was back when she could see a lot more.   I talked to him about all the surgeries she had that we did to try and save her vision, but that her eyes were just too delicate and they couldn't function normally.

He remembered going to the OR to have his eyes looked at, but he didn't know why.   I told him it was because Dr. Trese, who had never met him, wanted us to have his eyes checked because he didn't want him to lose his vision too.   I told him after that visit to the operating room we found out his eyes were just fine.

What does that mean for him, though?  I told him it wasn't fair.   I said it wasn't fair to him that his sister was blind, that she had lost her vision in such a complicated way.   I said it wasn't fair to him that we worried about her getting hit in the head.   But we worried about him just as much.   We just didn't worry about his eyes.   I told him I worried about him every day, but that I also knew he would be fine and that he could accomplish anything he wanted to.   I knew he was going to do great things,

What did it mean though?   I told him the reason his sister had the Apple Watch was that while she was very capable, she could get lost and not know how to get back.  It was why, when he told me he'd left her at the pool area (where they've been playing lately) alone the other day without her watch, I said he had to go right back.   Then I told him about the time she called because she was lost when she was right across our street, stuck between a trash can and recycle bin.

I told him another thing.   I said this conversation I wanted to be between him and me.   One thing we never wanted to happen was for his sister to feel anything less than capable.   He's seen her zip around the house and he knows she can navigate quite well, even though she can see almost nothing.   The problem is, people who can see don't realize just how much a blind person can accomplish.   We didn't want her to ever think she couldn't do anything, just because she can't see.

I told him at the end that I knew it wasn't fair.   But that we loved him just as much and worried about him just as much.   But we also knew how capable he was and that if it seemed like we didn't care, it was more likely that we knew he could do it all on his own.

I think he understood more after the conversation.  I hate that he feels like we don't care about him.   It's not fair to him.   He bears a big burden, being the sighted sibling of a blind child.   He helps her all the time and does it in a positive way.   He's learned how to be a help to her and never makes her feel less capable, just because she's blind.

The Big Boy Update;  My son is having a hard Monday.   His most stressful point with school today is that the format of the paper on which he is writing a letter to a relative just isn't "right."   It was slightly different from his standard paper.   He doesn't like change.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is mad at me.   She has her money and she wants the next audiobook in the Percy Jackson series and I am a mean mother because I won't get it for her before school is out.   "I have no right!" she told me.