Injury time
Friday, March 9th, 2007Fast forward to the present. S attends a school for children with autism where he is doing well.
It is 3.30pm and I receive a call from his lovely class teacher. She sounds serious.
‘I’m sorry, S has just been beaten. I’ve given him first aid.’
Images of my immature, trusting son being beaten up by large thugs flash alarmingly through my brain. It is only as the conversation continues that I realise I have misunderstood, she must have said ’bitten’ not ‘beaten’. It was her Eastern European accent which momentarily confused me.
Most parents would be horrified to learn that their child had been bitten at school, but actually I did not stress. I know these things can happen in the blink of an eye when a child is distressed and are almost impossible to prevent. Not so many years ago it might well have been S doing the biting, in fact I still remember the embarassment of seeing the imprint of a perfectly formed set of tiny teeth in the arm of one of his classmates. It could only have been S as he was late losing his teeth and the others had gaps in their mouths. Luckily the child’s mother was a friend and shrugged it off just as I am doing today.
An hour later he arrives home in his taxi. He looks happy. I ask him where he was hurt and he ignores me. At the third attempt he casually points to his upper arm but won’t let me look. It is not until bedtime that I see the damage. A small deep bruise, but the skin is unbroken, thanks to the thick fleecy top he was wearing.
It could have been much worse.
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