Stoicism

We were at the library for storytime today, something N and I have not had much opportunity to do together. I had brought him there with ulterior motives; mostly, I had brought him there to watch his reaction to being in a group of kids he doesn't know. His response was both upsetting, in that he once again showed that he can't deal with those sorts of social situations at all, and settling, in that he's been progressing by leaps and bounds since I've started working with him (having gotten fed up by how slowly the wheels of 'outside help' turn) and I'd become concerned that I was progressing him out of being able to impress an evaluator with his "differences." Apparently, not so much.

But that's not my point. At one point int he storytelling session, N slid off my lap and went to climb up on the chair next to me. As he lifted his leg to begin boosting himself up onto the seat--being a very small boy often means you can't just back up and sit down in a chair--I saw him wince. I looked at the clock. It had been exactly four hours since I'd given him Tylenol.

"Do your stitches hurt, sweetie?" I asked.

"No," he said, "They no hurt. I want to sit in your lap again."

After story time, we went into the library to look at and read some more books. I noticed he was walking slowly. "Do you want to go home and take some more medicine so it stops hurting?" I asked.

"No," he said. "It not hurting."

I furrowed my brow. I knew he was in pain, but I also want him to feel some control over his body right now, and so if he wants to just soldier on through, I want to let him. After all, there was so much about yesterday that he couldn't control. I can give him this one thing.

After he'd had his fill of books, he sat on the floor to play with some puzzles. At one point, he turned around to ask me something, and I watched him grimace.

"I ready to go home now, Mommy," he said.

"Do you want to stop and get lunch first?" I asked.

"No, I want to have lunch at home," he replied. "And maybe I can have some red medicine [Tylenol, the only one he can stand the taste of], too."

By the time we got hom, you could literally see the pain in his face, and the way he was walking, but he wasn't talking about it. He prattled on and on as he always does about the dump trucks he saw on the way home, and how the 'ment mixer' has to keep turning around so the cement doesn't get hard.

Where did this child come from? Baroy and I are whiners, or at least we'd like to be. (We've discovered, ever since we became parents, that we're not allowed to whine when we're sick, because it's just going to piss off the other person, the one who has to carry the full load of household chores while you're down.) Em is a Drama Queen Extraordinaire, enjoying ill health for all its worth.

But N just goes on about his life, and only gives in to the pain at the last minute. I just don't know to think about such a creature. I don't know how to deal with someone who doesn't moan over every ache and pain.

As I typed this, N came wandering into the family room to get a blanket to put on the hard chair, so his stitches don't hurt him. (I taught him to do that last night.) I asked, "Do you feel better yet? Has the medicine started to work?"

"Oh, yeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh!" he said, practically skipping into the next room.

He may only be four years old, but I think he's my hero.