Friendships & Having a Medically Complex Sibling
Leena has been struggling with friendships lately. She feels isolated and as if no one understands the hardship she’s going through. 😥
Leena calls Soraya from school every day at 2:15 pm so they can have a chance to talk before Soraya gets too tired. Soraya goes to bed at 6:30 pm, and on the nights Leena has dance, Soraya is already asleep when she gets home. This gives the girls time to connect they wouldn’t otherwise have.
However, it has also caused some unfortunate reactions from Leena’s classmates, who wonder where she goes daily. When she shares that she’s calling her sister who has special needs, they ask why that would warrant leaving class and tell her she’s a “teacher’s pet.”
Safi eloquently described the pain of Leena’s situation in an email to her teacher. Here is an excerpt:
“There has been a growing feeling that everybody in the classroom has been calling Leena a teacher’s pet. While this in itself is age-appropriate, in the light and setting of having a sister in hospice, it is difficult, painful, and exasperating to hear. This situation came to a head today with [Friend], who essentially told Leena that Soraya is not really dying because she has seen her do things—which obviously cheapens and negates the massive struggle of having a sister who is actually in palliative care and hospice. Leena even told me that she told [Friend], ‘Well, you don’t have to be in a coffin to be dying.’ Those words are honestly going to haunt me.”
There are days that Leena says she wants to scream and tell everyone, “MY SISTER IS DYING!” but she’s not sure that her peers will even be able to understand that. She’s unsure of when her peers will be able to understand and does not know how to navigate this situation in the meantime. How can other 9-year-olds process this information when I struggle with it as an adult?
As Safi put it, “It’s hard to navigate the normal things of school-age children with the very adult topics of death and palliative care.”
For now, Leena says she will just “deal with it” until the end of the school year. I wish I could shield her from this pain. 💔