The first time I gave my son George a shot, right before I plunged the needle into his thigh, I looked him in the eye and said: “Don’t forget, you’re a chicken.”
I had forgotten that I was the one who needed to pretend he was a chicken. I thought it would be easier to stick him with a needle if I pictured his leg as a piece of poultry. The trick worked anyway — he was so confused that he didn’t notice when I jabbed him. Once in a while he still says to me: “Don’t forget, Mom, you’re a chicken.”
Here is the thing they don’t tell you when they teach you to give your kid shots: Muscle resists the needle. You have to create a small injury to finish the job. But the damage never sat right with me. I’m his mother — I was supposed to keep him in one piece. And I had, more or less.
There are people who would disagree, who would argue that my failure to keep him as one thing, and prevent him from becoming another, was like standing on the beach and watching him swim into a riptide. Parents are supposed to spot potential threats and steer our kids clear of them. But no one ever said we would agree on what they were. And why would we? What one parent might call a danger, another might call a life preserver.
George has always been terrified of needles. Annual vaccinations were an ordeal. The minute he saw the syringe, he would get a crazed look in his eyes and wrap himself up in his little arms, ready to fend off any sharp objects. It was George against the nurse, and part of me couldn’t help but cheer for his resistance; I found it reassuring that the protest in him could be stronger than an instinct to comply.
I didn’t know how much he would be needing this moxie down the line. But in the pediatrician’s office, I colluded with the enemy and played the clown long enough for the nurse to finish the job. Afterward, he would look at me like some kind of traitor, which I suppose I was. A traitor for a cause. Now George had his own cause.
George started…
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