Fighter Jets

I try not to talk too much about current events on this blog, mostly because the ever-changing nature of the world means that within a week or two, whatever I’ve talked about is probably not happening anymore. Or we’ve found out something new, or we’ve realized that what we thought was true was just a snap judgement that turned out to be incorrect.

But this morning, at drop off, one of my daughter’s peers mentioned something about her acting silly and how it was probably because she had high blood sugar. The girl wasn’t wrong; my twins often do enter school with higher than ideal blood sugar. It turns out being in a class all day burns a lot of energy, and it helps get them through to snack time if they’re slightly high.

After the friend had flitted away, my daughter turned to me and said, “I really hate that.” I asked her to clarify, and she talked about how whenever she’s being weird or loud or, you know, a kid, the other kids attribute it to high blood sugar to get a laugh. And it turns out that diabetes is one of those things that it’s ok for her to joke about but less ok for other people to joke about. Because we don’t live it. We can’t possibly understand.

I’m not worried about bullying or anything. Kids are inadvertently rude all the time and there’s nothing malicious about it. My daughter knows that too. She knows that if it bothers her enough, she can tell them to stop or ask for help. There are a dozen adults who can have that conversation. She knows that kids have no way of knowing it bothers her unless she says it does. And for right now, it’s not that big a deal. One of the many annoyances you get when you spend your day with 10- and 11-year-olds.

An old version of me would have waltzed in, ready to educate or reprimand, going in with guns blazing. Forrest calls me a “fighter jet” parent. Not a helicopter parent who always watching. No, I’m just constantly on standby, ready to go bomb the crap out of anything that I perceive to be a threat. My kids are pretty consistently reassured/mortified by the fact that there is no amount of embarrassment that will deter me from taking care of them.

I didn’t used to be this way. I learned it because I had to. When you have a three-year-old who needs injections and candy (and occasionally to be force fed juice), you get pretty good at aggressively ignoring busybodies. And when your kid’s health depends on being very clear about exactly what needs to happen, you get good at communicating directly. Most of all, I’ve gotten very, very good at realizing that other people’s impressions of me are much less important than my kids’ trust.

As my kids age, though, it's been hard to have to step back and let them decide when to call in the fighter jet. It’s hard to watch them choose not to take action, to decide when keeping the peace is more important than feeling at ease. To watch them, in short, go through the same growing up process that we all have to go through.

I started this saying I don’t comment on current events here, but the other night, there was a debate in Pennsylvania in which one of the participants needed accommodations. Not for diabetes, but I’ve heard a lot of negative comments about his needs. And every time I hear it, I am reminded that if my daughter were up on that stage and her low glucose alarm went off and she ate a few Skittles, or if she went high and her voice got a little too loud, those same people would be talking about how unfit she was. How could we really trust that she was competent? How do we know if she’s fully in control if her body isn’t working exactly as it’s intended to?

And I want to bomb the crap out of it. I spend a lot of my time working to make sure that my kids get the necessary accommodations, and it terrifies me that someday they’re going to have to enter a world that treats people with disabilities with suspicion and contempt. As though the rest of us able bodied people are always even-keeled, rational or unaffected by things like hunger, exhaustion or pain. As though making sure that people with disabilities are given what they need is too much to ask.

I don’t know the best way to deal with a well-meaning kid who makes an off-color joke. I don’t know how to counsel my daughter. She’s got to find her own way of being in the world - the magic words that will make her meaning clear while also keeping her friendships intact. The world is full of people who accidentally hurt each other, whether that’s through attributing everything to their disability or asking them to pretend like it’s no big deal at all. There’s a middle way, but it’s hard and complex and requires forgiveness and understanding and most of all, humility.

The fighter jet inside of me is learning that humility, one day at a time, learning to make the effort to listen to the needs of my kids. And in turn, learning to listen to the needs of the other people around me, because lots of people have struggles we don’t see. This stuff isn’t easy. There are complexities here, difficulties that must be navigated with thoughtfulness and wisdom. But not a single one of those complexities is solved by making jokes. We’re not kids anymore who don’t realize what we’re saying, and it’s time we started acting like it.