Mommy, tell me the truth. These are words that I often hear from my daughter. After a while, Chloe realized that I was fibbing to her in order to get her to the doctors. Chloe has such a fear of doctors. Like most kids who have a syndrome or a disease she spends a lot of time going to Children’s Hospital for doctor's visits. I have always had this need to protect my daughter and shield her from pain. But that is not always possible.
One day Chloe asked me, “Mommy why do you not tell me the truth. You should not lie.”
I said, "Mommy does not want you to think about and worry about going to the doctors. You get upset and start to cry and then you don’t want to leave the house.”
Chloe said, “Mommy I am going to cry anyways.” But if you tell me the truth it will be better. I want to know what they are going to do. I want to know if I am going to get blood taken out.”
At that moment, I knew that I could no longer lie to her but I had to be honest with her. I said to her, "Chloe I am sorry. Mommy was wrong to lie to you. I will tell you the truth.
Chloe smiled and said, “Mommy you pinky swear to always tell me the truth.”
I told Chloe, Mommy pinky swears."
As I sat there fighting back tears; I quietly thought to myself, all I want to do is protect her. Shield her with my arms to keep her safe. It hurt so much because I knew that I could not always shield her from pain. All I could do is make it better with love and support.
It was heart breaking to me because I knew she was not a baby anymore but a little girl. She grew into a wise little girl who knew she was different from other kids. She is also caring and tender. But, don’t let these sweet qualities fool you. Chloe is very stubborn and very determined to get her point across. She is a typical five year old and feels she knows what is best for her.
Chloe is lucky and has a good prognosis but along the way she may have obstacles to over come. These are the obstacles of life that I want to protect her from. Even if I promised to always tell her the truth.
1 comment:
each child is so different but with my daughter, we had so many Doctors visits and they all required some sort of lab work, she hated going to the Doctors because they hurt her. I simply told her that sometimes life is hard and asked her if I had to go to the Doctors to be healthy she would want me to go and she shook her small head yes, she understood love very well. It didn't make it easier, just easier for her to understand why we had to take her and why they did the tests and sometimes it meant going to the hospital. We made the visits a time when we did something special. A girls day. We dressed up nice, went for lunch and bought some little toy to celebrate that we had more to be thankful for than to be miserable about.
I suspect Melanie will do the very same things for Mei-Ling who already at a year has a suspicious look for anyone in scrubs !
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