Head is OK

John’s head is officially reshaped.

We went on a walk in Alexandria, VA yesterday and an older woman stopped me and said, “You must rotate your son’s head. He has such a beautiful head.”

Well, I didn’t rotate it. But I do agree that Cranial Tech’s device worked fairly well.

While we were in California over Christmas, we went to the Exploratorium and met a woman who told me her (now 8-year-old) son had had facial asymmetry similar to John’s but that at the time the only treatment option available was surgery. The surgery would have involved cutting open the skull for what was only cosmetic, so she declined. I saw her son as he played and could only notice the asymmetry because of my studied eyes, but she was upset that his head wasn’t quite “right”. It made me glad that we did the band but also confirmed my suspicions that long-term affects of asymmetry aren’t quite as dire as the Cranial Tech salespeople lead you to believe.

In other John-news, I’ve been trying to raise John not to be a sissy, as much as one can do that at his age. When he had his band on, he did not mind falling over because his band protected his head from getting banged up, and I fell into the pattern of responding to loud crashes with, “Be more careful next time, John,” which I’ve continued since the band removal.

It seems to be working fairly well (at making him “take it like a man” even while a baby). I just don’t want him to use pain to become the center of attention. I probably would have had a harder time doing this, though, had he not had the band and the ability to take some rough spills without getting hurt for a while.

The other day, he took a tumble (fairly normal) and whimpered a few cries as I said, “Be more careful next time, John.” When I picked him up twenty minutes later, I realized his lip had bled during the fall.

While I realize some might not value being able to take a hard fall with just a whimper, I do and am quite proud of my little boy.