By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn

“Hey buddy, let’s try one finger tonight. What do you think? Just one.”

My five-year-old son was sitting on the bathroom counter staring at his reflection in the mirror, a daily habit for him at this point, the kid who has loved mirrors since he was two. He smiles, makes silly, contorted faces, occasionally lets out a delightful squeal and all in all acts very impressed with the handsome face staring back at him. He is also the kid whose developmental disabilities have significantly impaired his language and communication, and the sensory struggles woven into the fabric of his body have made simple things like cutting his nails a battle of anxiety-inducing proportions. For all of us. 

His kindergarten teacher had kindly asked us to cut his nails again, a somewhat embarrassing reminder for the mom whose secret desire in life is to look like she has got it all together. Do I really need a note from school to remind me to take care of my son’s basic hygiene? I felt a twinge of defensiveness, a desire to explain that “you don’t understand what you are asking, sweet teacher.”

She was, however, exactly right. I had known it was time for several days. As is the pattern, the nails reached a point that we could no longer ignore and no longer put off the impending battle. It had to happen tonight. I led in as gently as I could, willing him with the tenderness in my voice to please, please accept my proposition, “just one finger, I know you can do it bud. Mommy will be so fast, you will barely feel it!”

I reached for his hand, which he readily offered until he saw the nail cutters, then jerked it back safely into his lap as he said, “No fank you,” his programmed three-word response to all things he is simply not going to comply with. 

I tried with more tenderness, then I tried enthusiasm. It was bedtime after all, upping the ante on my desire to get this done and call it a day. The tone of my voice never had been a match for his will though, and tonight it was no different. We were headed toward the place we all hated going: dad holding him down through tears while mom fights to keep his hands still. Flailing arms and legs. The protesting strength of a ten year suddenly coming out of a five-year-old body. To the casual observer or the person unfamiliar with the havoc a sensory imbalance can cause for a child, the scene would be particularly troubling. For the parents who have been dealing with this for the better part of four years, troubling is just the start.

“What if mommy cuts one of her nails first, then you can take a turn?” I offered. I held up my left hand just a few inches from him, then modeled the simple, basic act of clipping a fingernail with the most gusto I could find. Of course this was not the first time I had tried this, a light-hearted and ‘look how great this is’ approach; but because my husband and I both recognized that he is getting too strong to hold down and too old to sleep soundly through our usual ‘sneak in at night’ routine, this was my most earnest effort thus far. Or desperate. Probably both. 

I clipped my own thumbnail, excitedly said, “see, it’s not scary, bud, you take a turn!” Then handed him the clippers so that, at least for a moment, he could feel the control a child with disabilities needs so badly to feel. 

Like he has done so many times before, he examined the clippers closely, deciding if he could trust the strange thing in his hand this time. He threw them on the bathroom counter and went back to his mirror admiration, giving me his answer. I gently grabbed his hand and tried again. He pulled it away. A few minutes of this chess match and we were at a standstill. 

I wasn’t ready to let him out of this; I’m prideful enough to not want two notes home from school in the same week, so I decided that moment was as good as any to tidy up the kids’ bathroom counter while the standoff continued. I grabbed a baby wipe and started with the toothpaste residue in the sink. I gathered the stray hairbands and bobby pins into a pile with the back edge of my hand and slid them off the counter into a drawer. Then I picked up the toothbrush package that should have been thrown away a week ago when the dentist gave all of the kids a new one, and tossed it in the trash.  

“Uh-uh-uh-uh!” my little guy motioned to the package, reaching out his arm and shaking his hand toward it.

“What, this? Do you want the package?” I asked as I held it up. 

“Package,” he said in return.

“It’s trash, bud, your toothbrush is already in the cup. See it over there?” I responded, throwing the package away. 

“Uh-uh-uh-uh!” he pushed back, hand still shaking toward it. “Package. I want package.” Unwilling to start a battle over a separate issue than the one at hand, especially with the bedtime finish line in sight, I acquiesced, pulled the package out of the trash, and handed it over.

“Here you go,” I said, an annoyed reluctance in my voice. He examined the torn pieces of garbage, pulled away the last edge of cardboard hanging on and freed a small piece of plastic. Then he smiled at me, and held the clippers to it. “Oh buddy, do you want to cut the plastic?” I asked, seeing a sliver of breakthrough in his trust. 

“Cut the plastic,” he responded.

“Great, try it!”

He gave the piece of plastic a clip. And another one. And a third and fourth until the small piece in his hand became a pile of minuscule pieces of plastic on the bathroom counter. Who knew that what I saw as trash was actually a pile of belief building up in his mind?

I found more plastic in the garbage, and let him experiment with the feel of cutting it. He was so engaged, so proud of his mastery that I let him do this for several more minutes before I presented the big ask. “Hey bud, are you ready to try your finger now?” 

He handed over the clippers and let me grab his hand. He let me take his index finder. He let me cut the nail. Almost 45 minutes after we started, my son headed to bed with ten clipped fingernails and for the first time in a long, long while, a peaceful mind about it. 

As I tucked him in, I told him over and over how proud I was, and that I saw he was a strong boy who did something that wasn’t easy for him. Cannon is not one for exuberant words of encouragement, and he shrugged off my enthusiasm by wrapping up in his blanket and saying, “Nigh-nigh.” I smiled and rubbed his thick blond hair, moving it off his forehead and to the side, my favorite look on him. 

“Night night sweet boy. Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, and Jesus loves you the most.” 

I closed the door behind me and met my husband, who was fresh off the opening chapters of the third Harry Potter book with our seven-year-old, in the hallway. “Did he really just let you cut all ten fingernails?” he asked me.

“He did! It took forever, but we did it. I feel so… accomplished!” I chuckled back, knowing full well that he would understand. It isn’t a word I would have used five years ago for keeping my children's nails at a safe length, but sometimes definitions change with circumstances, and it was a good word for that moment.

I did not enter motherhood giving things like trimming nails more than a moment’s thought, if I gave it any thought at all. But like most things in life, you cannot prepare for what is in front of you but you can learn when it comes, and you can do better the next time. What takes many children no more than a few minutes takes my son forty-five, and more patience and creativity than I ever anticipated. 

And while there have been very few changes in my son’s tolerance of this simple thing, what has changed is my tolerance; my idea that all time is my time and that others simply exist within it, maximizing my productivity as they do. I’ve had a wrong perspective on this most of my life. I’ve seen time as a commodity largely under my control and for my good. But that 45 minutes was not just mine, it was ours. It wasn’t wasted, it was simply spent, like all time is. How it was spent, well or not, depends mostly on how I look at it.

The lesson I needed, the lesson I still need, is this: time is not just mine. It’s given to all of us in 24-hour increments to steward; not bend and twist for our purposes, but God’s. And slowly, steadily, one finger at a time, I walked my tender boy through something incredibly hard for him. That forty-five minutes was not in the way of other work, it was the work, and more importantly, it was the purpose; because a little boy became braver and a mama lived a moment of dying to herself and I saw the smallest glimpse of God’s unwavering patience with us. I think that’s not a bad way to spend time at all. 

Photo by Leslie Tresher.

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