Posted by Tracy (195.147.234.146) on May 31, 2000 at 08:39:09:
In Reply to: KIDS!!!!!!!!! Please read..................... posted by Tracy on May 31, 2000 at 04:43:31:
and you're all right.....it's too much work. Why bother. So forget my suggestion, and forget my response to Chet.
Why let them be kids at all. They should operate on, and understand at, an adult level, especially when they get sick. We shouldn't make allowances for them. They're just Kids? So what? They get sick they should make themselves understand what's going on with themselves, make themselves understand all the jargon. So the pains bad and they dont understand it? So get over it! Theyll just have to make themselves deal with the pain. Just tell them it gets worse as they get older. Thatll shut them up. As for the medication? So there's side effects. If they dont understand? tough! Theyll find out soon enough when things start to happen. When their stomachs feel like theyre on fire, when they get serious stomach ulcers by the time they're 15. When they get a myriad other things wrong with them, theyll understand it then...Oh yes!
As for kids OF sufferers? What have they got to be worried about? Why SHOULD a 2 year old be frightened of a parent crawling round their living room crying and banging their head with a phone; getting up and running at a wall; begging their daddy/mummy to kill them? Screaming at them to sit down and shut up only minutes after playing with them; yelling at them to be quiet when they were just laughing minutes before. Why SHOULD an 8 year old be frightened of a parent that spends all night pacing the house in the dark, only to grab them when they get up to see of they're okay and beg them to shoot them? Beg them to stab them, anything, but just to kill them? Why SHOULD they feel guilty if a secret part of them WANTS to do just that, because they HATE what their parent's become? Tough! They'll just have to live with it. We do as adults, and as minature adults, so should they.
I can hear you all gasping in horror at what Ive just written. They ARE horrible words. They ARE shocking, unfeeling and callous words. they ARE hateful, harmful and nasty words. And yet..... WE'VE probably all suffered them from someone, whether we were children or adults at the time, at some point in our lives. They hurt us, the 'put up or shut up' attitude. The 'you're a wuss, coz you cant handle a headache' insinuations. Yet this is what we're expecting CHILDREN to do. To put up with what's happening to them or a member of their family. To worry about whether they're being brave enough when the pain gets so bad they think their head will explode and yet feel they're on their own. To worry every time they go to school, incase Daddy/Mummy finds that gun they've so carefully hidden; or gets more tablets to replace the ones they secretly flushed away.
But where can they go? to a site made up of adults where we swear and cuss, and some people make racist/bigoted remarks about others. Where some of us talk pure science about the ways to help the pain and some of us just cry. But then this is OUR site, a grown ups site.
I suggest you look at this site through the eyes of a child. I have, and as much as i LOVE it, its a scary place for a kid. Its also bewildering, there is so MUCH information (thanks DJ, you do a STERLING job, my friend!).
So Im putting a separate post up here. You can read it if you want, or not if it's too much bother. Its entirely up to you.
Its really for the people who need help for kids anyway.
Im sorry if Ive come on too strong here. Its not been my intention to offend anyone. But I feel VERY strongly that our kids are being deprived of their childhoods enough as it is. I am NOT going to contribute to a bit more being eaten away for those that suffer ch, or have a loved one suffering from it.
Take care and God bless,
Tracy