No lectern required

I went into Arden’s class this morning to give the six year old version of my, “what is diabetes” talk to Arden’s classmates.  It went very well, the children were very attentive and interested, they asked good questions and took the answers in with a great deal of interest.  

After asking the kids if any of them ever had a cold only to have it go away (they all raised their hands), I described that Arden has a part of her body that doesn’t work correctly and that unlike their colds Arden’s body wasn’t able to fix what stopped working.  Not too bad considering I didn’t rehearse.  We chatted about insulin and foods that are at times more like medicine and then as on cue Arden’s DexCom indicated that it was time to test.  Luckily those little kid’s eyes don’t have lasers built into them or Arden’s finger tip would have been burned off... It was completely silent in that room while she tested.  Then we talked some more, I assured them that Arden was no different then they and stressed that while if they notice something strange about Arden’s behavior they should tell an adult... that she did not need any special attention (Arden had a classmate last year that tended to treat he like  a baby and she was constantly looking after her in a way the Ards found irritating after a while).  

I explained why Arden was late today and then went along my merry way.  One more step closer to breaking down the wall of understanding between type I and the world -  23 more people on the planet won’t look at type I again as if they are any different then anyone else.  

Be transparent...

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The following are archived comments from this post. You can post new comments below.

Kari Kuhar

Wonderful to read this!  I myself am a Type 1 teacher of first graders :)

Friday, September 17, 2010 - 07:25 PM