I Don’t Know How to Talk to My Kids About My Old Scar
Last Sunday I was flipping blueberry pancakes for breakfast, and I’d gotten batter all down the front of my long sleeve shirt ten minutes in, so I shoved the sleeves all the way up to my elbows to keep them out of the bowl. Lila, my 7 year old, was leaning against the counter stealing blueberries out of the package, and I caught her staring at my forearm three times before she said anything. Jax, my 4 year old, just pointed, loud as anything, and said “Mommy that’s a big owie! Do you need a band-aid?”
I just laughed and said it was an old accident, turned back to flip the pancake that was starting to burn, and that was that. But I noticed Lila kept glancing at it when she thought I wasn’t looking. Later, when we were coloring at the table, she drew our whole family, and she colored a thick blue line right down the arm of my stick figure. That’s when I realized I’ve been avoiding this, and I don’t know what to do next.
The scar’s from a car accident when I was 19. The other driver ran a red light, was drunk. I got 27 stitches in my arm, and a bunch of smaller ones on my back from broken glass. I got lucky, all things considered—walked away with the scars and a little stiffness when it rains, that’s it. The other driver didn’t. I’ve been done with the hard part of this for years; I went to therapy, I got married, had these two kids, I barely think about it most days. I even forget it’s there until someone stares. It’s just… I never figured out how to say any of that to small kids.
It’s so stupid, right? I’m the mom that’s always going on about how all bodies have different marks, how it’s okay to talk about when you hurt, how owies don’t make you weird. Last month when Lila fell off her bike and scraped her knee so bad it left a little scab that turned into a pink mark, I told her it was her adventure mark and she should show it off to everyone. But here I am, changing the subject when she asks about mine.
Two weeks ago, Lila had her best friend Mia over. Mia was sitting next to me on the couch coloring, pointed right at my arm through my thin t-shirt and said “What’s that bumpy line?” I froze for, like, ten whole seconds, and before I could say anything Lila said “Oh that’s just my mom’s scar. She doesn’t talk about it.” Ouch. That landed right in my chest, I swear. Like I’d taught her already that some things are too scary or too weird to talk about, even when you’re curious.
I asked my husband about it last week, while we were doing dishes after the kids went to bed. He just shrugged and said “Tell ’em it was a car accident when you were young, that’s all they need. They’re not gonna remember the details anyway.” My sister said the same thing, basically—keep it simple, don’t overcomplicate it. But that feels like the same thing I’ve been doing, just brushing it off. It feels like lying, a little bit. If I just say “old accident” and stop, aren’t I hiding that it was scary, that it hurt a lot? But if I tell them the whole thing, am I just dumping a bunch of scary stuff on kids that don’t need to carry that yet?
Jax is four. He still thinks that if you put a band-aid on anything, it’ll get better. I don’t know how to explain to him that some owies stay with you forever. Lila’s seven, she already knows that people can die in car crashes. If I tell her the other driver died, is she gonna get scared every time we get in the car to go get ice cream or go to grandma’s? That’s my biggest worry, honestly. I don’t want to ruin the safe, easy little world they have just because I have a scar. I saw a mom on Instagram once who called her scar her superpower, and that was all cute and viral, but that’s not how I feel about this. It’s not a superpower. It’s just a stupid thing that happened to me when I was young, because someone else made a bad choice. I don’t want to sugarcoat it that much, but I don’t want to be all gloomy about it either.
I went digging in the back of my closet last night after the kids fell asleep, looking at the old photos I have from right after the accident, just to see. It looks worse in the photos than it does now, all swollen and stitched up. I don’t know if I should show them, or if that would just freak them out. I don’t have any friends with big old scars that have kids this age, so I don’t have anyone to ask that gets it.
I keep going back and forth. Some days I think I’m overthinking this whole thing, they’re just kids, they’ll take whatever I say at face value and move on to asking for a snack two minutes later. Other days I think if I don’t do this right, they’ll grow up thinking scars are secrets, that you have to hide the hard stuff that happened to you. I don’t want that for them. I just… what do you do? How much do you say? How do you say it without scaring them? I’m honestly just stuck here.
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