Times Like These

Today on the way home from Champaign I heard David laughing hysterically in the back seat. When I looked, I saw Kyle waving David's arm up and down against the arm on his booster seat. I THOUGHT Kyle was playing with David. Instead Kyle was upset that David was laughing and not crying. He was actually trying to hurt David! Now, I know that seems wrong. It IS wrong. But it is something that brothers actually do. He told us David was swinging his arms around and hit him in the head and it hurt him. So I guess he was trying to get him back and because of David's extreme tolerance to pain, David thought he was playing with him and thought it was funny.

Michael just told Kyle that David doesn't understand these kinds of things. That's when the waterworks started. Kyle let loose, wailing "BUT I WAAANNNNNNTTTTTT HIM TO UNDERSTAND!" The next words were "AND I DIDN'T WANT GOD TO MAKE HIM DIFFERENT!" It was heartbreaking. How do you find the words at times like these to explain to a 5 year old that sometimes life is just HARD? And we can't control what is being thrown at us?

Most of the time Kyle just goes with the flow. We try to get him involved in activities with other kids and he just started soccer. By no means is he lacking in that department. In fact, sometimes I think I try to do too much with him just because I don't want him to feel like he can't do things because of his brother. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes we can't do things because of David. We really wanted to go to Ruby Falls one year on our drive home from SC, but they weren't handicap accessible. We can't go on a bike ride as a family because of David. We aren't able to just hop in the car and be footloose and fancy free because of David. Those are just a few of the things we just CAN'T do. But there are plenty of things we CAN do as well. Until today, I never realized that Kyle really understood the severity of David's disabilities. It makes me sad.

After about 10 minutes of being upset, Kyle was fine. He didn't bring it up again at all. So we'll just leave it alone for now. As he gets older, he'll have more questions that we probably won't have an answer to. Right now, I'm just going to think of our conversation from the other day. Kyle said to me- "You know that David is really special, right?" Of course I told him yes. Then he said- "You know that I'm pretty special too, right? You know why? Cause I can run really fast." I'm so glad that he knows that they are both VERY special little boys!