Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Brotherly Love

Disabled and special need children need patience and attention. Lots of attention. That attention includes therapy, Doctor's appointments and so on. In doing so those of us that have more kids have to remember that the other child migh not fully understand, therefore may feel unwanted or unloved, which couldn't be further from the truth.

We try our best to explain the situation with Jasmine to her older brother, Frankie. But due to a number of different situations including physical therapists who spend their time with Jasmine working on her motor skills doing things like putting puzzles together or having her play with apps on their tablets, Frankie thinks that they are simply there to play with Jasmine and I'm sure he wonders why nobody comes to play with him once a week. Not to mention, when he goes along with us to her out of town doctor visits we take him to Chuck E.Cheese. Kind of as a reward for sitting through the long wait at the doctor's office plus the time they spend with Jasmine. So it has always seemed to me that when he doesn't go with us to her out of town visits he thinks we still take Jasmine Chuck E.Cheese without him and thus feels left out.

We make it a point to explain as much as we can to him and hope he understands. We have to remember that it's not his fault if he doesn't fully understand the burden that's been placed on his sister. We also have to make even more time for him so that he doesn't feel left out or like the black sheep. It's definetly harder than most people realize. But Frankie's a smart boy as he gets older he will understand. He already loves his sister and Jasmine looks up to him in so many ways. What else can you ask for?