Obviously, parenting sick kids has unique challenges that other families don’t share. Unless you are a parent of a chronically sick kid you can’t understand how these challenges can change who you are as a parent and a person. At least for me it has, that much I know.

With Gage’s bout of depression and PTSD so freshly minted in my head, I am worried about how I help Quinn navigate her trauma through kidney failure and transplant. Instinctively I helped Gage the best way I could and I think for me, an important thing is for me is to remember moving forward are those instincts and to draw from them the tools I need. I think the book I’ve been reading is giving me some other tools.

But the core of the advice for me is to listen. To pay attention. To be in tune with the kids. To learn that paying attention to the little details are just as important as the big warning signs – like your child wanting to kill themselves or die.

It’s important to remember that it might not be enough for that child to talk to them and ask them if they are okay. Because, as we all know, kids don’t have the vocabulary to express what is really going on. No matter how much I will for it to be true. This book helped me see that certain behaviors could be linked to certain trauma.

Sometimes its aggression and dangerous behaviors at school and at home. Sometimes it’s verbal attacks on themselves (“I hate me!” or “I’m ugly and stupid!” which Gage says a lot) or others. It can eating too much or not enough. Sleeping pattern changes and the acquisition of new bad habits (like biting nails, picking skin, cracking knuckles, all of which Gage did for some time) make their way known.

The problem? Those things could also be linked to the personality of your kid. Meaning – couldn’t every kid have these problems at some time or another when things are bad for them? I suppose if your kid has all or a high combination of all then there are some big warning signs.

Back over the summer, well, it really started on last Mother’s Day (Gage gave me hate mail that included a death threat) and had probably been building before that, he started to change. He’d gone from reasonably laid back for a child with behavior problems to new and more intense Gage. But he seemed to just get worse. The list of symptoms kept growing and by July 15thish, while we were on vacation and he was remarking about “when I almost died” I knew he was internalizing his trauma.

It’s not even that I was ignoring it but its so sneaky when it creeps up on you over time. In just a couple of months he went from okay to definitely not okay and we were speed dialing play therapists and psychiatrists across the southeast. This kind of intense gear-switching for a crisis is not new territory for any parent of a kid (or two) with a chronic, life-threatening disease.

Trauma doesn’t just stop with the kids. Some days the managing the kids’ disease makes me feel like I have some trauma injury as well. As evidenced by the occasional hysterical crying at night and the everyday feeling like I’m on a hamster wheel that won’t stop. In fact, the hamster wheel? I almost don’t know there’s a difference between that pace and regular life.

I think I’m wrapping this up by saying there’s also a component to childhood trauma that is saved for the parents. Well, to this parent anyway. And they don’t have a chapter on that in the book.