Gabriel is playing video games while I write this. Yes, video
games. He plays Paul, in Tekken 4 and will kick your ass with a wicked
one-two punch… so long as you don’t ever block him. He’s got one hand
on the controller and the other on my battery operated toothbrush. He’s
currently in love with the toothbrush. I caught him whispering sweetly
to it last night when he thought they were alone. He looks cute as
anything in his favorite ‘T-train’ T-shirt.
My boy knows all the characters on Thomas and Friends and can recite huge chunks of the dialog verbatim. He identifies, most closely, with Percy because, ‘a lot of things scare Percy at first but in the end he’s very brave'.
Gabriel understands being scared. It’s natural to be afraid of the unknown and for little blind kids, that’s everything. Terror can come casually wrapped in the most mundane packages. The same toothbrush he has recently fallen for once reduced him to a screaming, blubbering shadow of his two year old self. I had just gotten the toothbrush and was anxious to try my new toy. I turned it on when we were in the bathroom together, without warning him first.
My little dude has always been slow to start crying. It’s a process. His face becomes strangely blank for the moment before falls. Lower lip quivering slightly, his eyes fill with moisture – that somehow remains suspended long enough to gather into giant, glassy tears that fall down his cheeks in rapid succession. Had I noticed – at first tearfall – his distress, I would have easily been able to comfort him. But I didn’t. Like a self absorbed, oral hygiene obsessed maniac, I blithely brushed on. He screamed then, and I dropped the toothbrush. It spun and brushed a violent cacophony of noise into the sink that was 10 times worse than the sound that had initially frightened him. Before I was able to turn the toothbrush off, he lay down on the floor, covered his ears and peed himself.
It was a bad scene in the bathroom, so we got the hell out of there. I took him outside and calmed him down with a confidence-inspiring version of Raffi’s classic ‘Baby Beluga’. And then a dog barked two inches away from his right ear. Oy.
I had an epiphany while consoling my twice traumatized toddler. I couldn’t protect him from everything. I couldn’t warn him about every impending sound. As horrible as it was to watch him cry, sometimes I had to let him get scared, because only then could he learn to be brave.
My boy knows all the characters on Thomas and Friends and can recite huge chunks of the dialog verbatim. He identifies, most closely, with Percy because, ‘a lot of things scare Percy at first but in the end he’s very brave'.
Gabriel understands being scared. It’s natural to be afraid of the unknown and for little blind kids, that’s everything. Terror can come casually wrapped in the most mundane packages. The same toothbrush he has recently fallen for once reduced him to a screaming, blubbering shadow of his two year old self. I had just gotten the toothbrush and was anxious to try my new toy. I turned it on when we were in the bathroom together, without warning him first.
My little dude has always been slow to start crying. It’s a process. His face becomes strangely blank for the moment before falls. Lower lip quivering slightly, his eyes fill with moisture – that somehow remains suspended long enough to gather into giant, glassy tears that fall down his cheeks in rapid succession. Had I noticed – at first tearfall – his distress, I would have easily been able to comfort him. But I didn’t. Like a self absorbed, oral hygiene obsessed maniac, I blithely brushed on. He screamed then, and I dropped the toothbrush. It spun and brushed a violent cacophony of noise into the sink that was 10 times worse than the sound that had initially frightened him. Before I was able to turn the toothbrush off, he lay down on the floor, covered his ears and peed himself.
It was a bad scene in the bathroom, so we got the hell out of there. I took him outside and calmed him down with a confidence-inspiring version of Raffi’s classic ‘Baby Beluga’. And then a dog barked two inches away from his right ear. Oy.
I had an epiphany while consoling my twice traumatized toddler. I couldn’t protect him from everything. I couldn’t warn him about every impending sound. As horrible as it was to watch him cry, sometimes I had to let him get scared, because only then could he learn to be brave.
No comments:
Post a Comment