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Monday, March 30, 2009

The art of laughing at the situation.....

We attended the birthday party of one of Chance's cousins recently. It was a double birthday party for Chance's grandmother and his cousin who was turning 3. The cousin had family from both sides of the family in attendance. We see these people at a few birthday parties each year so Chance knows them by face, but does not really know them personally.

When it was time to have cake and ice cream, Chance's aunt announced that there were two kinds of cakes.....yellow and chocolate. These were not your run of the mill cakes baked in 9' by 11' inch pans and smeared with frosting. They were homemade cakes, with homemade icing set up on pedestals. One of the cakes was made in the shape of a barbie dress and barbie herself was sticking out of the middle like the cake was her party dress.

When it was announced that one cake was chocolate and one was yellow, Chance who was standing next to the counter said, "One is jello?"

There was soft laughter from a few people behind me and Chance's face flushed.

Chance's uncle repeated a little louder, "Chance, this one is yellow." and pointed to a pitcher of lemonade on the counter. Chance nodded.

Immediately after that, I heard the same people behind me say things like,"It looks like it could be jello." And "It sounded almost like jello."

I was appreciative of the attempts to help Chance not feel bad about his mistake. Once people realized that Chance had just not heard the word right, they were quick to understand.

It got me thinking though, that Chance will encounter many such instances in his life and some people may not be very observant and realize that Chance has implants and may not hear everything perfectly. And a few callous people may not care that Chance has implants. They will find it funny that he made a mistake.

I want Chance to be able to take these moments in stride and not feel mortified. He has nothing to be embarrassed about. He will not hear everything perfectly and he will find himself hearing things wrong sometimes. The trick is to teach him to have the confidence and the attitude to help him face such situations with out feeling stupid or embarrassed. I'm sure he'll be embarrassed sometimes that he did not hear something right, but I want to help him learn to get over it quickly and move on. I don't want him to retreat socially or anything like that because he fears he may make a mistake.

Chance did seem to recover quickly. He was soon sitting down at the same table with the people who had laughed and he was at ease.

Hopefully, Chance will accept the fact that he will hear things wrong sometimes, but that he is not defined by those mistakes.

3 comments:

Ann said...

I believe he will have or may already have the confidence to take these situations and make jokes out of them, once he learns how funny they can be, he can add it to his "repetoire of jokes. One of my favorites: I was always bemused as to why my brother Bob, was so special/awful that my dad had to begin every prayer with, "We humble Bob before thee." It was until I was in my 40's I figured out it was "humbly bow before thee". Little dense here, I know! :) Now this makes up just one of the many funny misunderstandings (repetoire of jokes I can tell) of my life.

I've also learned to laugh when I make an embarrassing goof, and use my wit to build on the initial joke. Perhaps you can help teach him this skill when you yourself have embarrassing goofs. Doing this gives me and the others immediate comfort as they laugh with me, and we are all at ease. For example, if he were older and had learned this skill, and this happened; after the initial gaffe he Chance could laugh and say in a laughing voice, "Hey everyone don't blame me! It even looks like jello!"

Lissa said...

Did you name your baby girl?

Norm Paxton said...

Yep - Lexey Sabrina :)
Thanks for asking !