On Friday, I was phoned by Jadden’s summer camp and informed that he had injured his ankle/foot. I wasn’t terribly worried. Jadden does injuries—lots of them. Most of them mean nothing. Several of them, in my opinion, are fabricated for attention.

What happened to the good ol’ days? I asked my partner. When I would hurt myself playing a game with friends, I would pretend I hadn’t. Kind of like tripping and then behaving as if you meant to skip across the sidewalk like that. The goal obviously was to avoid embarrassment.

But not kids today. Not Jadden. They seem to relish in who can have the biggest injury and who can have the largest entourage escorting them in from the playground.

As a principal, I would happily provide a bag of ice or a band-aid to an injured child. It made them feel better. Ice and Band-aids are cheap, right?

But when does this cross the line? I have wondered this several times this weekend. Jadden’s limp turned into a hop which turned into moaning and groaning—an absolute inability to do anything for himself (“Grandpa, will you bring me a pickle?”).

I waited for the injury to pass. But it didn’t. Jadden next required the injury to be wrapped. He couldn’t walk on it and couldn’t even participate in activities that he would normally enjoy.

Maybe this is real, I thought. My dad made me feel guilty about not taking him to the doctor sooner.

So, on Saturday morning, I hauled Jadden to the doctor. Just to make extra sure, I made up some scary stories:

Me: You know the doctor is probably going to need to give you a shot.
Jadden: No he isn’t.
Me: Yes! He’ll have to numb the pain. So he’ll probably need to give you one, two, or three shots. With a needle this big (using my fingers to embellish a needle the size of a foot ruler)!
Jadden: I don’t believe you. I need to see the doctor.

Alas, Jadden was convinced that his injury needed to be attended to and sympathized for, and so we landed at the doctor’s office. The doctor conducted x-rays. They treated him truly like an injured king—taking him through the halls on a wheelchair, carrying him to the table. I rolled my eyes several times during the ordeal.

The x-rays came back negative. In other words, the injury was nothing more than a sprain. Jadden got his foot re-wrapped and was told by the doctor to start walking on it.

Ha! I thought. Exactly what I believed in the first place. I felt vindicated. Or did I? I felt relieved that Jadden’s injury wasn’t more seriously. I also felt annoyed that we had spent precious resources at the doctor’s office when a sprain would have healed on its own. And I felt concerned that Jadden believes he must exaggerate an injury to get the kind of attention he needs.

I spoke with him about this. I reminded him of “Peter and the Wolf”. I told him that he would have lots of aches and pains, especially as an active kid. And that he needed to, most of the time, work through these. That they are a natural part of growing up.

What I didn’t tell him is how to earn the kind of positive attention he deserves. Actually, he doesn’t even need to earn it. He just needs to recognize it and feel more satisfied with the joy this brings than the attention that comes from stubbing your big toe or banging your funny bone.

Perhaps Jadden’s injured ankle or foot or whatever is a wake-up call to me. It might serve as a symptom of a deeper angst that keeps surfacing in incidental injuries. I plan to talk with people I trust about this and figure out a way to begin healing whatever is going on in the inside so it isn’t manifesting in strange, invented ways
on the outside.