>An Unexpected Reaction

As many of you know, my husband has been very ill after reacting badly to an antibiotic he was taking for a minor staph infection. For a time, his liver wasn’t functioning properly, and he and I had a terrifying week waiting to see various doctors and find out what the hell was going on. You’d think that during this time, when Hubs had turned yellow and everything he ate was going straight through his body without passing ‘go’, that our older girls would be beside themselves, right?

Wrong.

They sailed along through the week, seemingly oblivious to the tumult. At first, we tried to act normal when they were around, but as Hubs began to show signs of improving, he told them more about what was happening- that his liver had temporarily stopped working, that he was worried, that it was serious and scary. Still, they seemed unaffected, going about their daily activities without a care in the world, never asking about the latest doctor’s appointment or lab result without first being prompted by either Hubs or me.

It’s hard to take, especially because I remember doing the very same thing at their age. My mom found a lump in her breast and had to be put under in order to have a biopsy. In response, I acted like a total heel, ignoring what she was going through and whining when I didn’t get my way. The only reason I remember the episode at all is that my father uncharacteristically blew up at me and told me I was basically being a jerk when for all we knew, my mother could have had breast cancer. Thank God, she didn’t. I’ve always felt guilty since that time for acting so inappropriately.

And now, I’m seeing how it feels from the other side. And luckily, since I remember my own teenage experience, I am taking it with a grain of salt. I don’t believe that the girls don’t care. I don’t think that they wouldn’t be devastated if something were to happen to their father, just as I would have been devastated as a teenager if my mother had had cancer. I think that teenagers simply have an extraordinarily hard time dealing with the threat of mortality when it comes to someone they love. And so they- don’t. They simply ignore it, because that way, it can’t possibly be real, at least according to them.

My stepdaughters are good, loving girls who spend a lot of time with their family, unlike many of their friends. I’m trying now to look at the big picture, at how they act in general and not at this specific, stressful situation. I write this post hoping that if any of you out there (heaven forbid) go through a catastrophic situation and your teens react the same way, you’ll realize that their uncaring demeanour may simply be a cover up for a fear that they can’t even articulate or allow to rise to the surface, and that you’ll try your best not to let it affect you or your opinion of your child. It’s not an easy thing to do, but then, what is easy when it comes to raising teens?

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.