In Which Kittygirl Goes to Camp

It's been over three months, so I suppose it's time for a new post if I'm not going to admit I've entirely abandoned this blog, isn't it? As I write this, summer vacation is about 2/3 over. It's July 15, and the kids go back to school on August 10. Which is a travesty. Summer should not be over on August 10. But I digress.

Kittygirl has done day camps many summers, though not in 2020 or 2021 thanks to Covid, but this summer she had her first sleepaway camp experience. At the end of June she spent a week at Camp Hendon, a diabetes camp. And as I write this she's enjoying her last night at Camp Crooked Creek with her Scouts BSA troop.

In case you aren't aware, diabetes camps have been in existence for many decades. Actually, nearly a century according to the quick google search I did just now (as you see, I believe in thoroughly researching things before I write a blog post about them). The first diabetes camp was started by a doctor in Michigan in 1925, just a few years after the discovery of insulin. The longest running diabetes camp is Camp Ho Mita Koda in Newbury, Ohio, which was established in 1929.

Some camps, like Ho Mita Koda in Ohio, Camp Sweeney in Texas, and Camps Clara Barton (for girls) and Joslin (for boys) in Massachusetts, have their own property and run sessions all summer long. Many more, like Camp Hendon, are mostly volunteer run operations that borrow another camp facility for a week or two at a time. Some camps welcome friends or siblings of kids with type 1 diabetes for one or more sessions during the summer, but my impression is that the majority of diabetes camps are just for kids with diabetes.

Camp Hendon is hosted at two different camps in Kentucky, both of which are owned by the United Methodist Church. Our family is United Methodist, and we've been to events at both camp facilities. In fact, Mr. Engineer and I actually met at a Sunday School retreat at Camp Loucon, where Kittygirl attended Camp Hendon this year. It was a fun bonus to revisit the place where I met my husband when I dropped off Kittygirl. Though I regret to say that, 24 years on, I didn't really recognize the place. 

Some kids are nervous when they go away to sleepaway camp for the first time, no matter what type of camp it is. Kittygirl was not one of those kids. She was so excited for camp to start she barely had time to hug me goodbye.

At Camp Hendon, and most diabetes camps as I understand it, the medical staff will ask if you have a diabetes goal you'd like your child to try to accomplish during their camp session. This might be testing their blood sugar on their own, counting carbs, or learning to change their diabetes tech. I told the nurse I'd love to have Kittygirl learn to change her pump site. Five years on, she still has a lot of anxiety around site changes. In fact, she was on the verge of signing up for diabetes camp last summer but decided she couldn't handle having anyone other than me or Mr. Engineer change her sites. She's had so much anxiety around pump site changes I doubted she'd actually achieve it.

Not only did she achieve her goal, she totally rocked it. She has wanted to help with every site change since. She hasn't actually put a site on at home, but she's filled the cartridge and the tubing, something she was never the least bit interested in learning how to do before camp.

A lot of campers have reportedly never met another kid with diabetes before they go to a diabetes camp. That was, of course, not the case for Kittygirl. To begin with, we knew another local family with two type 1 kids before she was diagnosed. But, more importantly, as I've posted about before, we've found an amazing diabetes community at the Friends for Life conference. However, even with her FFL experience, Kittygirl thought diabetes camp was special. The first thing she said to me when I picked her up from camp was "I'm definitely going back next year".

I have no problem sending her back. Her self care skills have continued to increase as time has gone on, and diabetes camp pushed her over one big hurdle. She'd really like to be able to attend a regular sleepaway camp next summer in addition to diabetes camp (scout camp is in a different category because Mr. Engineer is a leader in the troop so he'll always be on site if she needs him), but in order to do so she'll have to be entirely independent in her diabetes care. We'll make sure the staff is able to respond in an emergency if and when she goes to a regular camp, of course, but day to day diabetes tasks will be up to her.

Because of the push and the boost of confidence her week at Camp Hendon gave her, I think there's a very real possibility she'll be able to do it.

If you're reading this and your kid doesn't have diabetes but does have some other type of disability or chronic medical condition, I highly recommend searching for a camp for that condition. There's a good chance there is one. Out of curiosity, because Kittygirl has a good friend with life-threatening food allergies, I searched and confirmed that there are summer camps for kids with food allergies.

Spending time with people who understand what you're going through is incredible. That's why our whole family loves Friends for Life (Which Scout Camp overlapped with this year. Boo!) and why Kittygirl and so many other kids love diabetes camp.

In Which ADHD Looks a Lot Like Irresponsibility

Mr. Engineer and I had a parenting disagreement last night, and the root of it lay in the fact that I have personal insight into the way that Squirrelboy's brain works and he doesn't. It can be difficult and frustrating to explain to your neurotypical spouse why you understand your kid's ADHD brain because yours works similarly. Especially when he seems to willfully not understand that it could possibly be the way the kid's brain works and must simply stem from a lack of discipline. I'm sure Mr. Engineer's position seems difficult to him too. I'm not trying to demonize him. However, the only perspective I can fully understand is my own.

So what happened last night? Squirrelboy likes to listen to books while he falls asleep (not calming books, just whatever he's listening to at the time, which can range from murder mysteries to nonfiction books about racial justice). His accesses these books via an app on his phone. Due to an incident earlier this year his phone charges in our room at night, but he has a bluetooth speaker that can play something from the phone even while it's across the hall in our room.

Last night at bedtime Mr. Engineer noticed Squirrelboy holding his bluetooth headphones instead of his speaker as he set up his book. He asked why Squirrelboy wasn't using the speaker. Squirrelboy explained that his speaker was dead and he wasn't going to wear the headphones but rather set them on the shelf above his head on their loudest setting. 

Mr. Engineer was not pleased. He told Squirrelboy that he shouldn't listen to a book if he wasn't responsible enough to charge his speaker. I intervened and told Squirrelboy that he could use the headphones.

Mr. Engineer then asked me something along the lines of, "So, you want to reward his irresponsibility?" He's gotten even more serious than ever lately at wanting to make sure Squirrelboy has the skills to survive as an adult now that he's less than three years away from legal adulthood. I saw the situation differently and replied, "No, what I want to do is not punish him for having a disorderly brain."

What Mr. Engineer saw as a clear indication of irresponsibility I saw as a clear indication of an ADHD brain. If I don't stick exactly to the scaffolding I've built for myself or I haven't built scaffolding for that particular task, I do exactly the same types of things that Squirrelboy does. This is despite the fact that I will soon turn 44 and I've managed to earn two college degrees, hold down a full time job for awhile, and (now) run a household. I like to think I'm a responsible adult, but that hasn't changed the fact that, without serious effort, I make exactly the same types of mistakes that Squirrelboy makes.

I had no idea at the time that this was an indication of ADHD, but an example of the scaffolding I set up for myself early on can be seen in my experience in summer school in high school (FTR, I was taking summer school because my three foreign languages didn't leave room in my schedule for American History and Communications, not because I failed something :)). Summer school started late enough in the morning that both of my parents had left for work before I left the house, in contrast to the school year. Because of this, I forgot to bring my lunch with me three days out of five for the first two weeks. I'd realize it when I was about halfway to the school, turn around to get it, and screech into the school parking lot about a minute before my class started. I knew this was untenable. It would result in me getting a speeding ticket, incurring some kind of penalty for tardiness, or both. So I set up scaffolding for myself. I taped a note to the steering wheel of my car that read REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR LUNCH. I never forgot my lunch for the rest of summer school.

I had to do the lunch note thing again in graduate school after my roommate got tired of driving to campus to bring my lunch at least twice a week (she had a job and worked second shift). It did not occur to me at the time that I was doing something people with ADHD often have to do. I just thought I was unusually forgetful.

I could give you other examples of scaffolding I've set up for myself. Every once in awhile I think to set it up before something goes wrong, but most often it's resulted from many incidents of failure - like establishing one and only one place to keep my keys after losing them nearly every day for years. I still haven't set up scaffolding for keeping track of my phone. I still have to call it using the home phone to find it at least three times a week, sometimes even more than once in a day. It really sucks when I realize I've left it on vibrate.

This probably should have occurred to me earlier, but recently I realized I need to start setting up scaffolding for Squirrelboy and teaching him to do it himself. Maybe if he learns this early on he can prevent himself from, for instance, losing his keys EVERY.SINGLE.DAY for the first two decades of adulthood. Not that I did that ;). Step one today was agreeing with Squirrelboy last night that he should plug in his speaker to charge this morning and every morning so that it would never be dead a bedtime again. I wrote a note on the board, and included taking his medicine, since we both forgot about that yesterday and school was harder for him than it should be. We'll see if this helps.

In Which My Tween and My Teen Aren't as Responsible as Adults (But For Some Reason that Surprises Me)

News flash: 8 year olds and 14 year olds aren't adults. You would think I would know this, and I do of course in theory, but sometimes I still find myself expecting my kids to act like adults when it comes to their decision-making ability. That came up in different ways for both kids this week.

Though I've gotten better about not compulsively checking my Dexcom share app, I do still often take a peak shortly before her lunchtime and sometime in the afternoon (her lunch period, for some unfathomable reason, falls at 10:35am). When I checked before lunch her bg was coasting in the 80's, which is a totally awesome number to be at right before a meal. I figured she might actually stay in range for the whole school day, which isn't super common and would be totally awesome.

When I looked again shortly after noon, her bg was nearly 300 and still climbing. I could not for the life of me figure out how that could have happened. I'd allowed her to switch from greek yogurt tubes to gogurt tubes, which have a little more sugar. Could that have made such a big difference? We'd had an issue with a bad pump site a few days earlier. Could it have been happening again?

There was nothing I could do until I picked her up at 2:45. I checked her pump as soon as we left the building, intending to look through the history and try to figure out what happened before giving a correction. I didn't need to go that far, however, her pump was still on the "confirm bolus" screen from lunch, which means that she did not deliver any insulin for the lunch she ate.

To my credit, I learned a lesson after I reduced her to tears for not bolusing for her snack at Girls on the Run in the fall. I didn't get angry. I told her what I saw, explained that I was relieved there was such a simple explanation for her high blood sugar, then gave her a correction and sent her on her way.

Internally, however, I was pretty annoyed both that a) she forgot to complete a process she does EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. and b) the teacher didn't notice. When I reflected on it, though, I realized that it's actually expecting a lot to give my still relatively young child responsibility (even very part time) to take over for one of her organs that stopped doing part of its job. Under normal circumstances, kids without allergies can just eat without thinking about it. It's not as if she willfully sat down and ate her lunch without pulling out her insulin pump. She entered the information. She just forgot to deliver the insulin.

Diabetes, as much as I hate this fact, is a marathon, not a sprint. Barring a cure (which I don't think will happen until Kittygirl is a young adult, best case scenario), Kittygirl will have to deal with this disease her entire life, long after I'm done raising her and having at least some responsibility for her actions. My job is to teach her to manage her diabetes as well as I can, and to try to do so gently so as to either make burnout as a teen or young adult unlikely or something she has the tools to overcome.

In another venue altogether, Squirrelboy reminded us this week that he's still not completely responsible. Monday night he was caught using his phone in an unapproved way later at night than he's allowed to use his phone for anything other than listening to books before falling asleep. He wasn't accessing anything objectionable, but he was breaking hard and fast rules nonetheless, and the phone history showed it wasn't the first time.

Understandably, Mr. Engineer was pretty upset when he caught him. I was already in bed when it happened, but I heard about it in the morning. Squirrelboy had lost his phone for the day, and he came into the living room in the morning crying. I thought he was crying about losing the phone, but it turns out that what really upset him was that he had disappointed his dad and he was afraid Mr. Engineer would never trust him again.

I assured him that that wasn't the case, but he didn't stop being stressed and nervous until he and Mr. Engineer had had a talk about the incident after dinner. This reaction actually made me happy, because it shows we're doing a pretty good job as parents. If our teenager breaks a rule and his main cause of distress is having possibly lost his dad's trust, I call that a parenting win.

New rules have been set, including the phone charger being moved to our bedroom and the phone being plugged in to charge before bedtime and not moving until the morning. Perhaps we should have done this to begin with, but, as a general rule, we prefer to let our kids have a good amount of responsibility unless and until they show they aren't ready for it.

That applies to both diabetes responsibilities and general life responsibilities. Sometimes it turns out well. Other times it doesn't, but the way we react to those times (like, say, not freaking out about a high blood sugar caused by user error but rather using it as a teaching moment) has the potential to teach our kids a lot.

In Which Kittygirl Misses Dance Class Because Her Brother Has ADHD

As I've mentioned before, to my great surprise, Squirrelboy has been thriving in his first year back at public school. I pick him up most days (he can ride a bus, but it involves a transfer and a long wait and his school isn't far from Kittygirl's). Most days he bounds into the van with a smile and a story about something interesting that happened that day.

Today was the kind of day I feared might happen regularly during Squirrelboy's transition to public school. He was practically in tears as he slouched into the van and he declared angrily, "I have a ton of work to do and it's all due tomorrow!"

A ton of work translated as rewriting an essay he thought he had finished (he showed it to his teacher, who said it was week and recommended serious revision), finishing a presentation about Disney music that in theory should have been done in class (his partner didn't do any of the work), making some corrections to the digital poster for his science project, studying for a Civics test, and figuring out what to do about a group project for which one group member kept refusing to do his part and which was due, you guessed it, tomorrow. 

Squirrelboy spent the entire car ride home turning himself into a ball of stress over all the work he had to do. I assured him that, yes, it sounded like a lot of work, but that he had proven himself capable over the semester and that, after a short break to calm himself down, I was sure he could tackle the work. 

We arrived home about 3:15. I had to put dinner together so it could be put in the oven at 6pm and then Kittygirl and I were supposed to leave for her ballet class no later than 4pm. Squirrelboy took his afternoon ADHD meds and then decided he should set right to work (normally he takes a break of 20-30 minutes to let the medication take its full effect).

I sent Kittygirl to her room to do the 20 minutes of reading still needed to finish her reading log for the week, and set about to make cream cheese chicken pinwheels in the kitchen. Squirrelboy kept asking me if I could look at his work and I kept telling him that he'd have to bring the computer into the kitchen (at his school almost all work is done on a school-provided Chromebook). 

I was still working on the pinwheels when Kittygirl finished her reading. She came in to help me in the kitchen and Squirrelboy was struggling to even make a start on the project he was supposed to have finished in class. He practically begged me to come out and help him, but, by the time I finished putting dinner together, it was 3:50 and I wanted to leave for ballet in about 5 minutes.

This is when Kittygirl showed herself to be a good sister (either that or to be tired of having a commitment four afternoons a week). She offered to give up going to ballet class so that I could stay home and help Squirrelboy. I felt kind of bad, but she wasn't grudging about the offer and I knew that Squirrelboy might never finish his work if I weren't sitting by his side. I did consider bringing him to ballet, but the travel time would have cost him an hour of work time.

So I gave Kittygirl permission to watch a video in my room with the door closed and sat down next to Squirrelboy at the makeshift work station he has set up in the living room. It includes a larger monitor and a real keyboard he can attach to his Chromebook.

He was still a ball of stress, and I started by saying a prayer for him to have peace and to be able to look at his work in perspective and do his best. This isn't something I do regularly in my parenting, but I probably should. I then looked at his work with him and typed (which I do much faster than he does) while he worked his way through the assignment. He bounced ideas off of me, but ultimately the work was his.

The "in class" assignment took about an hour. Then Squirrelboy tackled the essay revision, which, in his words, was "easier than I thought it would be." Yet again, he bounced ideas off me and I typed, but the final product was his thoughts and words. That took him about half an hour. He corrected the few minor mistakes in his physics poster in about 15 minutes. He then had me look over an assignment for health which he had forgotten about in the initial stress induced panic (it's not actually due until the end of the day tomorrow). I pointed out some minor grammar and spelling errors, and he fixed them and submitted the assignment early. Finally, Squirrelboy looked at the group project that has been stressing him out. The teacher had extended the deadline out another five days, which means Squirrelboy can talk to him in class tomorrow about the dilemma that he has done his portion and the student who is supposed to do the final edit (the project is a podcast) has not even started and seems to be okay with getting a zero on the assignment.

Squirrelboy then took a break while dinner cooked and studied for Civics after dinner, which only took him about 20 minutes. He's been studying throughout the week for this test and just needed a final perusal of the unit concepts.

I'm really not sure whether I did the right thing by staying home to help Squirrelboy today. In the moment, it certainly seemed like the right thing. Squirrelboy absolutely has the ability to have done all the work by himself without me by his side. The typing would have taken him longer, but I think the work would have been of just as good quality.

What Squirrelboy cannot usually do at this point, however, is talk himself down when his emotions have escalated to the point they had reached today. Though in a very different context, his anger and stress was quite similar to what happened on fall break at the beginning of October (read the post from October 3rd if you haven't and you're curious). 

In terms of teaching my kids independence, as I talked about yesterday, I still haven't figured out the best way to walk the line of helping just enough versus too much when it comes to Squirrelboy and his stress induced near-breakdowns. At some point he needs to learn how to regulate his emotions, deescalate himself (or, better yet, not escalate in the first place), and sit down to accomplish whatever it is he needs to accomplish. 

I see that, but I'm not sure at this point how it is we're going to get there. In the meantime, I now know a lot more about what sets Disney songs apart from pop songs (Disney songs, for instance, normally have many more words and no repeating chorus), so at least I learned something interesting from today's experience :).

In Which I Don't Assign My Kids Chores Because I Do Them Better

Kittygirl has wanted her own cat practically since she started talking. Heck, she probably wanted one before that. She just couldn't tell us. When she was a baby we had four cats. One of mine even let Kittygirl pull her around by the tail. I think the poor thing was so attention starved at that point she was willing to put up with it so someone would pet her. Two of the cats had died by the time she was two (they were both 15 and one had cancer, she didn't love them to death or anything :)). Another died when she was three and a half. Our last cat lived until Kittygirl was six. Ever since then she has wanted her own cat even more. We intend to get her one someday, but we needed to get new carpet first because said last cat had a bad habit of peeing on the carpet and we didn't want a new kitty to follow in her footsteps.

When about six months had gone by since that cat's death and we were nowhere near getting new carpet (it's finally happening early next year) I advocated for getting some small caged pets. I found out that a friend from the homeschool coop we were a part of was looking to rehome some guinea pigs and we adopted Tesla and Sugar, pictured below.

In case you're curious, Tesla belongs to Squirrelboy and Sugar to Kittygirl. Tesla is named for the car company and Sugar for her large white patch. I find it amusing that a kid with diabetes chose to name her pet Sugar. When we got the guinea pigs, the idea was that they were the kids' pets and therefore the kids were going to help care for them. This was supposed to include cleaning out their cage, which, it turns out, is one of the most annoying chores of all time. 

We've had our little piggies for just over a year and a half now. I think Squirrelboy has cleaned the cage twice. Kittygirl helped me once. They do occasionally hold their pets while I clean out the cage. Why have I let his happen? For the simple reason that, if I'm the one who cleans the cage, it gets done both more quickly and much better. Mr. Engineer keeps pressing me to give them more responsibility for their pets, but I really don't want to. Cleaning the cage myself is annoying enough. Supervising a kid while it gets cleaned would be at least 10 times more annoying, and it wouldn't get done as well.

While I don't feel too bad about being the primary guinea pig cage cleaner, I do regret applying this philosophy to a lot of things in parenting. I'm way too quick to do something for one of my kids or to help them so much I might as well be doing it. 

I know this is partly because of their disabilities. I still sometimes type assignments for Squirrelboy because it's easier for him to speak his thoughts than to write them. When I was homeschooling him, I gave him a lot of leeway to do assignments differently or push them off if his ADHD was making it hard for him to manage the assignment at the time. I still talk through with Squirrelboy what work he has to do every afternoon to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything. At some point I need to help him transition to doing these things himself, but he's only a high school freshman so I don't yet feel the pressure to make him be fully responsible for such things.

Kittygirl has never had any problem with schoolwork. In fact, compared to her brother she'd almost be way too easy if her ridiculous pancreas hadn't stopped doing one of its jobs. Where I need to be careful with Kittygirl is in not taking on so much of her diabetes care that she never learns to be self sufficient. This is a fine line to walk, because I also don't want to give her so much responsibility at a young age that she burns out and decides she's done taking care of herself at 15 or 20. Thankfully, the day camp I've mentioned before has helped to push me in the right direction. Two summers ago, it was the first place she tested her own blood sugar. Last summer it was the first place she entered things into her pump.

The camp is held at a private school that grew out of the amazing cooperative preschool that Kittygirl attended. I've recently started working occasionally as a substitute aid at the preschool to a) make some extra cash and b) hang out with some fun kids. Seriously, it's so much fun I can't believe they pay me. Anyway, I was working in the art room today and I noticed this sign.

I loved this sign when Kittygirl was in preschool, and that's the kind of philosophy I want to embody in my parenting and often fail to do. Yes, there are times when you need to do things for your kids. There are other times when you need to give them significant help and guidance on the way to eventual independence. However, if you never let them try anything on their own, they'll never acquire the skills they need to be successful adults. They'll just expect you to step in for them all the time and accomplish all the big (and even many of the little) things in their lives for them. I think this is a concept that's important for all parents to keep in mind, but especially those whose kids have extra challenges and may need extra help. They may take a different, slower path to independence. In some case they may never be fully independent at all. However, it's still our job to help them get to whatever point they're capable of reaching. Letting them care for their pets, even if they don't do it as well as you do, might be a great place to start.

In Which I Realize That I Actually CAN Let Kittygirl Out of My Sight

Kittygirl was diagnosed with T1D just a few weeks after her 6th birthday. She had quite recently reached the age at which I was beginning to regularly leave her at playdates and birthday parties, and she had even begun to ask about sleepovers. When I was told that she would need to have a shot every time she ate anything and her blood sugar would need to be checked regularly, especially when she was playing actively, I was afraid I'd never be able to leave her alone again.

I was terrified to send her back to school (which happened just three days after diagnosis) because something might go horribly wrong. Despite the fact that, at that point in time, her teachers had had almost as much diabetes education as I had, I presumed I was better because I was her mom.

She survived the her first day of school after diagnosis, of course, and her care at school has always been great. Until she got an insulin pump, however, I still attended every playdate and birthday party. I wasn't comfortable asking other parents to give Kittygirl a shot. 

After Kittygirl got her pump, a mom at soccer asked if I was comfortable having her come to their house for a playdate. I nervously agreed, and proceeded to give the mom a 15 minute mini training session when she picked up Kittygirl. Everything went fine.

That winter, Kittygirl was invited to a birthday party. I had still been staying at every party, but, in the second semester of 1st grade, I had become unusual. First graders are normally dropped off at parties, at least around here. Kittygirl begged to be dropped off. I nervously asked the mom of the the birthday girl if she was comfortable texting me a picture of the food before Kittygirl ate and entering the number of carbs I gave her into the pump. I gave her a demonstration of how to use the pump. She was happy to help, and I walked out the door.

I was nervous enough that I didn't choose to go far. I parked myself at public library branch just 10 minutes from the birthday girl's house. I looked at Kittygirl's Dexcom graph about every 10 minutes to make sure she wasn't going low, despite the fact that I had alarms set to notify me earlier than the alarm on her phone would beep. Everything worked out fine, and I realized that, with friends with parents willing to learn, it really was acceptable to leave my T1D child at a party.

As time has gone on, I've gotten more and more confident leaving Kittygirl at playdates and parties. All the parents of her friends have been incredibly helpful and willing to learn. I realized we're blessed in that way. I've heard plenty of stories of kids who are excluded from parties and playdates because of their T1D.

We've entered new territory this year. The day camp Kittygirl has attended for two summers now is held at a local private school. I was nervous approaching them about accepting a child with T1D the first year, but they were totally open to it and willing to let me and Mr. Engineer train their staff. The school encourages kids to be independent in their own care (normally this is things like putting on their coats and tying their shoes) and they encouraged us to push Kittygirl into the first steps of independence in diabetes care. That camp was the first time (the summer after first grade) that Kittygirl tested her own blood sugar. This past summer (after second grade) we agreed we'd test out the idea of Kittygirl using her pump there with adult supervision. Since that worked well, we continued the practice this school year.

Kittygirl asked for even more independence when she begged to sign up for the Girls on the Run afterschool program. It's run by college age volunteers. I met with her main coach half an hour before the first session and gave her a brief rundown on diabetes, but Kittygirl has mostly been on her own dosing insulin for snacks and treating lows. It has not always gone well. You can read the post in which I reduce Kittygirl to tears to learn more. However, overall I've seen Kittygirl take some big steps.

Yesterday was the last session of Girls on the Run before the 5k this weekend. Unbeknownst to me, they had a Christmas party, and most of the food was not labeled for carb count. Instead of asking a coach to text me, Kittygirl looked at her plate and estimated the carbs on it. She nailed it. Her blood sugar never went above 124. I was amazed and proud when I found out.

Mind you, Kittygirl, who will turn nine in 2 months and 2 days, is far from fully independent in her diabetes care. She uses her pump and treats low on her own when we're not with her, but we do everything (and I do mean everything, including taking the pump out of the pouch) when she's with us. She is not ready to help change her pump sites or CGM sensors. In fact, she currently has no interest in learning. 

She's also quite a ways away from nighttime independence. It's a rare night that her blood sugar doesn't go low or high, and I still have never let her have a sleepover away from us. I've reached the point where I might consider it with a parent I know well who was willing to keep their phone on and all night and possibly get a call or a text. In fact, there was even a sleepover planned this summer but Kittygirl backed out at the last minute. Slumber parties, on the other hand, are a bridge I'm not yet willing to cross. I'm sure I'll get there, given how far I've come from the day Kittygirl was diagnosed, but I'm nervous about putting another parent on the spot to treat overnight highs or lows while dealing with all the other chaos that a slumber party entails.

The one thing I've never been really nervous about letting Kittygirl do, with or without diabetes, is climbing up to high places. She's an excellent climber, and she's also good at knowing how high she can climb and still get down safely. She has often gone so high in trees and on playground equipment that she makes other parents nervous.

I think this is a good analogy to giving your T1D child gradual independence. Of course you're not going to leave your newly diagnosed 3 year old at a party, just like you're not going to let any 3 year old climb to the top of a tree. However, as your child gets older, it's appropriate to give them more independence as they show readiness for it. 

Just like with climbing, this will look different for different kids. Some kids are giving themselves shots with adult supervision at 6. Others are still asking for help at 14. Some kids are climbing to the top of the monkey bars at 5, while others are having a hard time just crossing them at 8. 

I'm in favor of following the child's lead for the most part when it comes to independence in diabetes care. I think it's fine (and sometimes even advisable) to suggest the child try a new task (testing blood sugar, giving a shot, using their pump, etc), but I don't think it's a good idea to push. Even if you see 50 posts today on that diabetes parent Facebook group of 4 year olds testing their own blood sugar, it's really okay if you still do it for your 8 year old. 

My one caution (based on the experiences of others, not my own) is to avoid pushing all diabetes tasks on your child from an early age, even if they seem ready. This is likely to produce diabetes burnout sometime during adolescence. So far, I really like the balance we have of a lot of independence when Kittygirl is away from us and us totally taking over when we're together. Only time will tell if the balance we've achieved now will work out well long term.