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My 7 yo goes into a sort of zen state whenever he has to be in the hospital or E.R.  His eyes get bigger, he slows down, he shows almost no emotion, and considers every question carefully before answering.  I'm pretty sure it is because he is very suspicious of medical personnel.  That time he had the urinary catheter surprise when he was 2 has not been forgotten.  The happier and more energetic the staff the more suspicious my son.

A few years ago an overly bubbly nurse popped up by his bedside and started peppering him with questions in a babyish voice as she took his vitals.  I could see him go into his zen slow-down mode, times 10.  Her smile got bigger in response to his lack of response and her high pitched baby talk lisp even more pronounced.  I ended up talking for him- something I try never to do unless he is unconscious.

When she left the room he looked up at me with an extremely concerned face and said, "Mom, I think something is really wrong with that lady."

Last night we were at the E.R. and the nurse started explaining to my son that he was going to have to, "put a huggy thing around his arm and then give him a straw- that wouldn't hurt at all, except maybe a quick pinch and then they were going to get a tiny bit of... well they were going to run some tests, and he needed to be really calm."  Then the nurse was called out of the room.

My son turned to me and asked, "Was he trying to say that they are going to do an I.V. draw?"

Medical personnel: beware the baby talk, it induces lethargy and lack of confidence in some children.


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Unfairness is part and parcel of life.  Just ask the post office.
Sorry, bad pun.

Anyway, I've never been a big believer in overly protecting my children from unfairness.  It's just too big a job and I'm lazy.  I figure that the sooner they internalize this concept the earlier they can get over it and I'll spare the world 7 new adult-whiners.

Sometimes unfairness turns around and bites me.  My chronically ill 6 year old son has to have lots of portable snacks.  I try to stay away from processed (read expensive and full of junk) snacks but I do keep Extend bars around just in case.  I don't share them with his healthy siblings- they don't need them and see above mentioned- expensive.  Sometimes if we hit a time snag as we are out errand-running this means my 6 yo gets a snack tossed to him in the van but no one else does.

Yes, it is unfair.  But then again none of my other children will go into a coma if they miss a snack.  So we roll with it and mostly the older kids take it in stride.  Mostly.  The 11 yo complained with a quiet groan of, "Man, I'm hungry too." the other day.  I was too- but traffic had slowed us and we were way out of schedule and I have to admit I was perhaps a wee bit grumpier than normal.

I snapped, "Life's not fair- you may not get a snack but you don't have to go to the hospital either, so deal."  Yes, I know, stellar handling.  I am expecting my mothering award in the mail any day now.

What I didn't expect was the 6 year old's serious response.  "Yeah, life isn't fair because when I'm sick I get to go to the hospital and play awesome games on their computers and get go to the play room and get frozen yogurt from Ben and Jerry's and he doesn't."

Thankfully the 11 year old was wise/kind/precious enough to not respond other than smiling at me.



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A few days ago I was reading a quirky little non-fiction math book, Life of Fred- Butterflies, to my 6 year old- lest you think I was torturing him, he loves this math series.   Along with Don Quixote it discussed cardinal numbers and then the cardinal number for infinity.

What?  Infinity has a cardinal number, wait what are cardinal numbers again?" were my panicky thoughts.  Math generally induces panicky thoughts in me that I must suppress with a stern self-lecture of, "I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer." -because quoting Dune makes me feel more mathy. 

Aleph-null is the cardinal number associated with the set of all whole numbers.  It is the smallest infinite number...  Not that I understand this, and we moved on to some other activity.  My brain was ready to flush the whole concept. Except a couple of days later I was standing in the library stacks waiting for my 6 year old to locate a particularly coveted bound compendium of Calvin and Hobbes, which weighs more than he does, when a book caught my eye:  The History of Infinity.

Wow.  The last math book I read, Innumeracy, merely explained how stupid I was and then laughed at me as it demanded I return my college diploma but as I don't tend to learn from my mistakes, I checked it out in full expectation that I will not actually finish it or understand more than 10% of what I do finish.