Boundaries

A young girl walked into the clinic emergency entrance, shaking and bleeding from several abrasion wounds. I attended to her immediately, and she told me she had been involved in a motorcycle accident - a car had hit her from behind but thankfully she hadn't sustained any major injuries.

She was in a shocked state when she first came, scared and shaking and kept repeating how fearful she was at telling her mother - from the way she spoke it sounded like her mother was a real fire dragon. It turned out that she had lied to her mother about where she was going and had taken out the family motorcycle to meet friends in town.

“Take a deep breath, and focus first – there’s no point worrying about it. For the moment you’re well and that’s the most important thing,” I told her. 

Her mother finally arrived and I smiled as I let her into the clinic emergency section. Her daughter ran to her and I was about to smile, but it shocked me when she opened her mouth to speak to her mother – with disrespect, almost to the point of screaming at her mum. She really kept mouthing off, even accusing her mother of scolding her despite her being hurt. Her mother hadn’t even really scolded her at this point – it felt like her mother herself was shaking at the thought that her daughter might have been involved in a serious accident. 

I don’t know where the boundaries of respect were blurred between mother and child, but to me it is shocking to see a child mouth back at her mother so blatantly. While the child herself was definitely slightly traumatized by the accident, it was also obvious that she was trying to run away from her fault and shift the focus of the blame unto anything other than herself. 

I can only hope I've never treated my own mother like that or that any future child I have will ever speak to me that way.