Don't Forget the Other Child!

I'm grateful that our son, Timothy, has his own set of issues. Otherwise, we might think that CF is the only thing we have to worry about! Thankfully, “T” has a disorder called Sensory Processing Disorder, which means that his sensory input receptors can be easily overloaded. This leads to very bad outbursts, which can turn violent. Thanks to some great occupational therapy and some patient teachers at school, Timothy has made great strides in this area. And Great Strides is what this family is all about!

Lest anyone misunderstand, my gratitude here stems not from the fact that Timothy has something wrong with him so that he and his sister can both have issues. I merely mean that it might be easy to be complacent with our son's development if he didn't have “issues.” I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the built-in reminder from God that he is Lord over all of my family, that he knows I might have become completely immersed in CF had my son not had these problems, and that he trusts me with both of our children.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with this. If you have CF, did your parents have trouble working with you and your siblings equally? If you have more than one child, how do you make sure you spend the same amount of time (relatively speaking) with each child? Do you do other things to “compensate” for the fact that the child with CF naturally requires a lot of time?

More than anything, I'd like to hear your thoughts on making sure that all of the children of a given family receive the proper attention, whether they carry a disease or not.