It happened again. I was speaking with someone about what I do and why; and they proceeded to run down the entire list of what happened to their father, uncle, and grandfather in about as much unasked-for-details as you could imagine.
When they left I started to think. I thought of how many times this has happened.
This morphed into me thinking of the enormous amount of times that I have read of horrible experiences at schools.
My thought process continued into the many conversations I have read dealing with loved ones.
These are all people who, generally, care about other individuals. The phrase hit me like a water balloon full of ice water; when people say the things they do, and we want to grab the nearest item and ram it in their nose; I have come to the conclusion that in most cases people are not mean, they are clueless.
Schools have 9 million things on their plate; why should they even think that they have to stop and be versed in something that impacts one child when they have 5 million things to worry about that impacts 1500 kids. Clueless, see what I mean.
Your relatives have all of the same problems you have but without the child with diabetes and perhaps with something else on their plate. It is enough to deal with our own problems to even think about someone else’s diabetes. Again, clueless.
Let me tell you of all the horrendous things that happened to MY relatives, why would I care about your kids? Yup, clueless.
Now I am not saying it is okay to be clueless. It is just that I was always under the impression that when faced with what we deal with day in and day out, people became mean for some reason. They neglected to address the problem with the importance we did. They did not come to our aid when we needed it because they did not care. Mean? Not true. Clueless.
Because how could anyone who would see what was done all day long, thinking as our children’s pancreas, managing everything that we do, waking in the middle of the night, having to hold a child who is so low they cannot stand, or so high they are frantically all over the place, or are rushing to the doctor’s office or worse yet, the emergency room….if they knew; if our friends knew, if the school knew, if our family knew; they would not just turn their backs on us, would they………that would just be down-right mean. So that only leaves; ‘clueless’…….right?
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2 replies on “Diabetes…….Are People REALLY that Mean?”
The word “inconsiderate” comes to mind. I’ve started to use it internally, and sometimes in conversations with my kids. Some well-intentioned people don’t stop to consider the impact of their words. They are, literally, inconsiderate.
This doesn’t mean that I am fine with what they say, only that I don’t feel personally attacked. It also means that I may take measures to limit my, or my child’s, contact with such people in the future. If the relationship is unavoidable, I may try to offer a hint. (“Is that meant to be helpful?”) If they don’t get the hint, I pack my emotional armor along when dealing with them.
The clueless’ way of showing support is by proving they can understand where you are coming from with their own experiences. (I am guilty of doing this myself sometimes). Not that I want to be mean just that I am not thinking within the listener’s brain, taking their trigger words into account. Diabetes Etiquette seems like a good book topic. But it would have to be written by several authors to get the best amount of input and opinion. There are quite a few people I would like to give a copy to as they often think they know all they need to about diabetes. What they seem clueless about is approach and the differences in treatment for types up to now. Doctors, School nurses, coaches and administrators as well as relatives and law enforcement could benefit from this as well.