This year has been a year of "awakening" for Sarah. I remember one day she came home from school very upset, almost in tears. I asked her what happened and she burst into tears and told me this story.....She was walking down the hall to class and a big group of kids were surrounding something and she automatically thought "Oh, a fight! Who is it!" So she ran up to the group and pushed her way through and a girl was lying on the floor having a grand mal seizure. Sarah had never seen someone have a grand mal seizure before. She started listening to what the other kids were saying about it and she was frightened. She asked the people around her..."isn't someone going to help her?" She wanted to help so bad, but she didn't know what to do. She wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. She was so disturbed that she didn't want to ever go back to school. I had to listen to her through tears and those questions:"Do I look like that? This is horrible, what do kids say about ME when I have a seizure?"; and as a parent try to figure out what to say to her. What do you say? (I wanted to say, "no, you don't look like that and those kids don't ever say mean things and make fun of you" but we all know that would be a lie). So I do what I always do: I held her tight and reminded her that everything will be ok and that no matter what people love her for who she is.
The next day she decided that she wanted to do something at school to help, so she asked her AP "Since there are posters in the halls about what to do about choking, can we have posters on the wall about what to do in case of seizures?" Let's just say her idea was shot down. Why would they want to bring attention to seizures?
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