Developing Self Worth to Safeguard Your Child Against Bullying with Meg Apperson

Today we have a special guest joining us, her name is Meg and she's a blogger, a home-school mother, and a pastor's kid; she and her husband, Cody lives in North Carolina with their four children. Meg is a passionate lover of words and advocate for medically fragile children and an aspiring minimalist. She also has a popular lifestyle blog, Four Fine Lives. So Meg, tell us a little bit more about your story and why you're on the podcast today. 

Meg: Well first thank you so much for having me; you really covered most of it. That was a very thorough introduction, thank you for that. Like you said, my name is Meg Apperson, I'm married to my husband Cody and we have four kids, twelve, six, five, and two, so we're very busy and we're a home-schooling family, just lots of kids, really busy all the time. Our third child Avery was born and it's unexpectedly with some pretty serious medical needs, she's born very medically fragile, very special needs. So that takes up a lot of time and really it's where the book came from and where the blog came from, it's just kind of talking about our life and how we walk that out with Avery. 

Avery is five-years-old and was born with Syndromic Craniosynostosis and that happens when one or more in Avery’s case, more than one skull plate fuses in utero and what happens is when those signals are sent, there's kind of a cascade of complications, structural complications that come from that. So all the organs surrounding those skull plates are affected; so nose, eyes, ears, airway; in Avery’s case because it's syndromic, it also affects her heart and her kidneys. So there are very obvious differences, aesthetically, Avery appears syndromic, and then she also has some internal issues also. 

Has it affected her cognitively?

We are not sure to what extent it has affected her. So you would not know if you talk to Avery, if you talked to her on the phone, she might be a little hard to understand because of the way the syndrome affects her mouth and her tongue and palate and all that but she is very bright. You wouldn't know really that she's been through anything, but a lot of it is kind of wait and see, we don't know how much the syndrome affects her. We know that structurally her brain is very unique, she has some brain defects that we have done a lot of surgeries on. So that's kind of the way of answering your questions, but we don't know.

October is national bullying prevention month

October is national bullying prevention month, so the reason I brought Meg on here is to kind of talk about her experience with Avery how other people treat her, how other people through Avery and obviously bullying is not just for kids who have physical disabilities or mental disabilities, but because there's such a physical difference, she's experiencing it a lot more and so we're going to have Meg talk a little bit more about that and kind of help us navigate when someone's different than us, it can be skin color, it can be physical differences, it can be mental differences, it can just be political differences. I mean, this world is just so crazy right now, we'll talk about more like how we can treat people.

Meg: So we come from, I have a huge family. I'm one of eight kids and so there are a ton of cousins that Avery grows up with. Most of my siblings live close by, there are over, I think probably 25 grandchildren so far, so just a lot of children. Most of the time, Avery has no idea that she's different, most of her interactions are with people who know and love her, which is really special, something I'm just so, so grateful for. We have a great community, most of the time that's not something that we face. It's more if we go out to eat, people will just look at her for prolonged periods of time. No one has ever said anything that has made Avery feel different; I really think the first time that happens, it will surprise her. I think she will really be like, wait, what are they talking about? So when people stare at her, I tell her that she really has the most beautiful eyelashes in the world. She wears these little pink glasses and her dark Brown eyelashes are so long and so sick that they're like crinkled up behind her glasses, I think she's just spectacular in every way. So she really believes that everybody just wants to be her friend and everyone loves her and mostly that has been our experience, which is really nice.

Lauren: Wow. I really love that and I think that I don't know, what do you think it is with your family that they just accepted her from the get-go? So for me, I grew up with an uncle who's three years older than me, so he's basically the same age and he had down syndrome and I just remember, we'd always be like, oh yeah, this person's like Bryden and we would just know that things were different cognitively and the way they process it was different. But then when people would make fun of Bryden we'd be like, what, why are they doing that? We just grew up with it. Do you think Avery has made this impact on your family and all the cousins? Or do you think that they already had that empathy and compassion already?

Meg: I don't think we can take credit for all of it. I think that by nature, they're all really generous, they have generous souls and then Avery was just so lovable and so strong. You can't be around Avery and not become more empathetic, more aware of how your actions affect other people. I have a really adorable story that kind of gets me choked up every time, every year we go away as a family, as the big extended family to somewhere for Christmas or Thanksgiving, there are so many of us just with the siblings and their wives, my parents and then just all the kids. So we go away together and this was a few years ago and Avery didn't learn to walk, she still is struggling to walk well, she's five and we're still working on that.

But three years ago, Avery could only crawl and that was her mode of transportation. So she was probably three and there were four or five cousins around her same age range and of course they could all walk and so we were in this huge house and I looked up, looked in the other room where they were playing and everyone was crawling alongside Avery to match her; you can't teach children that, there was this automatic, no one had forced them, no one had said anything. It was just like to include her they matched her speed and that just like, who are these children? How does that happen?

Lauren: I love that so much, that is so special and I think that's exactly what it is. I think just being around people and loving them, no matter where they are on whatever trajectory of education, academics, whatever, you just love them because they're family and I think growing up with people who have disabilities or who are different in some way gives us that empathy just because we love them and we see them and we're like, oh, they have different challenges than us. I'm not going to make fun of him for that, I'm going to join them in crawling on the ground and that's special. I think that's something that you can't teach children and they just naturally do it by being around people that are different than them.

“I think it's a gift that Avery gives everybody that she's around in that she normalizes for them these differences and so to them, Avery is just another person, The more you surround yourself with people who are different, the more you can kind of learn that language and see perspectives that are different than your own. I think that that always is a bonus.” - Meg Apperson

Lauren: Absolutely. Absolutely. There are just gifts that we learned from being around people that are different than us and like I said, it doesn't even have to be a disability. It can be different privileges, different challenges, different skin colors but being around that diversity is what helps us to have a different lens and perspective on life and I love it. So it breaks my heart; so the other day my sister told me this story, like her son, he's not very good at soccer, but he's on this competitive team, he's good at soccer, but he's not as competitive as these other kids who have been playing competitively for a long time. Anyways, he was the goalie and they were winning by 20 points because they were playing a different team and he missed the last goal and his team started bullying him and the other goalie started pushing him and all of these things and I'm just like, okay, if aunt Lolo, that's what they call me. If Aunt Lolo was there, I would have let those kids have it. My sister's like, I don't know what to do in that situation, like, do I get up? He seemed to be handling on his own, that kind of thing.

So how can we support our kids and you haven't had this experience totally with Avery, but you have older kids too;

How can we support our children and be an advocate for our children when they're in a bullying situation?

Meg: So I think it starts with how we train them to interact with that and how we raise them to believe that other people's reactions are not a reflection of us; that is a reflection of them. So for Avery we talk about, I believe that you were born the way you were born on purpose for a purpose. All of this makes up the person that you were supposed to be, you can't be who you were meant to be without all of this experience. So none of this is an accident, none of this is just happenstance, this is purposeful. You have a calling, you are meant to be Avery exactly how you are and then other people's perception of that other people's problem with that becomes less of an issue because your life is not about them. Their life is not about you, we have this autonomy in that way. So let me start with that and start with that with all my children.

“Other people's reactions are not a reflection of us; that is a reflection of them”

“So none of this is an accident, none of this is just happenstance, this is purposeful.You have a calling, you are meant to be Avery exactly how you are and then other people's perception of that other people's problem with that becomes less of an issue because your life is not about them. Their life is not about you, we have this autonomy in that way.”

Do you tell them that every day or how do you get that in their heads?

Meg: We talk about it all the time, just about people can be different, people can dislike you. I don't tell them just don't care what people think, there is an element of self-awareness and you don't want to be insensitive.

“But if someone has a problem, especially about your personhood, the way you look, the way you talk, your personality; that is only a reflection of them. You don't have to change anything about you that's inherently you, — maybe you're a little obnoxious sometimes and those are the things that we kind of temper — but the things that are your personhood and who you are, nobody gets to make a comment about that. That affects you long-term, that is not about you that is not a reflection of you”

So we just start with that.

Lauren: So some things that I teach is just like teaching things proactively. So we don't wait for our child to be bullied to teach them that, but you have this family culture where this is important and has that always been important, or do you think Avery has made that more important as you see that there are obvious differences with Avery that you want to kind of front-load those issues with?

Meg: Yeah, I think Avery has definitely made it more important. It just didn't occur to me that, with more traditionally able children, that people would say things that would impact them in a serious way. We're pretty careful about how we speak so that just hadn't occurred to me and then when I would hear other people's stories who were maybe medically fragile or had obvious differences, it was like, okay, we're going to start with your identity doesn't come from other people. We don't need to spend our lives referencing others to find out who we are. We're going to decide that right here, right now, remind ourselves of that all the time. So that when that happens, because it's going to happen and it happens for everybody, as you said it, you don't have to have obvious differences in order for people to say things that make you question who you are or your value or whatever it is. We try to like you said, pre-emptively kind of preload that all the time so that those are the neuropathways that are ingrained. You may not like me, you may not understand me and that's okay and that is for you to deal with that is not my work to do, that's yours.

Lauren: Wow. That is so good and I think that, as you said, Avery's like a gift to the people around her, but she's like a gift to all of us too, because it's not like Avery like five years old and teaching us this, but by being who she is, she's helping us be more aware of, we are inherently who we are and it's something that we don't think about as parents of traditionally developing children to instill that in our kids, but they face the same issues and if we can get ahead of this now with all of our children, how much more empathetic and compassionate are they going to be as humans growing up in this kind of evil world? I love that. So when people see Avery and you say they just like stare, what would you rather them do? What would you rather their response be to Avery? Because if other children see Avery and they're like, she looks different, they haven't seen someone who looks different, we want to teach them, so…

How would you love them to respond?

Meg: So a couple of things. So I think the best way to get to know somebody is to try to relate to them. So if you see someone that looks different and you don't have to interact with them, it's not that they're looking to have extra interaction than a normal person. So just because you see something and you're curious, doesn't mean that it's the burden of the person who looks different; it doesn't mean you make that their problem, you're different and so now you're going to educate me on why you're different, that's not Avery's job to explain to someone why she is the way she is. So if you see someone and you want to interact with them, I would say just a question or hi, my name is whatever, what's your name? And then as much as you can try to relate, I've seen people do this really naturally or out and about, and they'll say hi, what's your name? And she'd say Avery, and they'll say, Avery, I love your pink glasses, I wear glasses or I love those shoes that you're wearing, something to make relatability with; we're humans and so we have that in common and I would say probably don't start off with why do you look different or especially, especially with children who look different, there's this idea that they also have mental challenges and so Avery will be standing there and people will maybe direct the questions to me as though, like, what's her name? 

Like Avery, what's your name? I direct her to say, this is a human, you can't just see them and assume that based on this idea in your head that, oh, someone's face is built a little differently than they're not on the same level as me as a kind of traditionally developed person and that's not the case. So you really have to approach it with how much can I direct at the person to show them that I see them and honor them as a human and then if you see that you're not getting a response, directing it to the parent after that.

Lauren: I just love that you've shared this story and just kind of helped us understand how to relate to people that are different. Do you have anything else that you'd like to end with and tell us about with Avery, with you, like how your life has kind of changed and just what you've just gained as a perspective throughout all of this? 

Meg: So the first few years were incredibly difficult, there are very few people and in Avery's case, we don't even know what her syndrome is. We've done all the genetic testing and so we don't really know what we're dealing with, it was pretty rare to have Syndromic Craniosynostosis and then it's extra rare to not even have an official name for that. There are like 200 plus syndromes and we can't find the gene that they're thinking was mutated. So there were so many unknowns, it was really, really so difficult and yet everything got easier with time. We learned how to do all the care, it really became second nature and so I guess what I hope people come away with just in this atmosphere of the world where there's so much suffering, everyone is suffering in some way, there's nobody that's not untouched by what's going on, either in our country or globally, health-wise, there's a lot going on and just that the longer you do something, the easier it gets most of the time and that suffering is not always bad. I would go back; I mean, I would change every suffering, it's horrible to watch her in pain. I wish I could take all of that away. 

But for me personally, that journey of walking, suffering out alongside her is something that I would never undo for me personally, the change I had, the way Avery has broadened my perspective, the wealth of empathy, and a new community that she's given our family is just invaluable. So to everyone who's suffering and feeling like they're overwhelmed and that this will never get better and there's never a light at the end of the tunnel, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel and suffering is always something when I outrun or get away from as much as possible. But there's a lot of growth that can happen there, there's a lot of introspection and learning who we are in a crisis that we couldn't learn any other way and there's a lot of clarity that can come in if we'll sit with the discomfort and accept that it hurts, it's horrible and yet maybe there's something we can learn from it.

Laura: I love that so much, that's something as I went through infertility, and then I went through brain surgery and I went through all these things, I realized they were like why are you so positive? Why is this? And I'm like, there's always, obviously, this is horrible and I'm sad, but also there's so much growth and so much strength in our trials that change who we are and if we didn't have those, we wouldn't be the person that we are today.

Meg: Yeah. I feel like suffering really, really condenses, really distills our gifts or the things that we're naturally good at, it really shows us what we're passionate about in a way that you really can't learn any other way. 

Laura: So good. So good. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm going to have your information in the show notes, your book. Her book is called Sky Full of Stars: Learning to Surrender to God's Perfect Plans and it looks amazing. I'm excited to read that and we will have just her information in the show notes and go follow along with her story and her blog.

Find Meg Here.