Warner Bros contacted me about a collaboration for this post. Warner Bros owns DC Comics, the American creator of all time favorite superheroes like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and The Flash. They asked me to write about their WB Kids Youtube Channel, which I watch with my son, but what I really want to talk about is the importance of superheroes and why kids deserve them!
My Super Hero
You know what's hard? It is hard having a child who doesn't grow. Some of you may remember last year when we thought my son was Gluten Sensitive, the pediatrician prescribed him a 100% gluten free diet, which pretty much changed our lives drastically for the next six months.
They thought he may be Celiac or severely Gluten Sensitive because no matter what he ate he just wouldn't grow. He is so much smaller than other kids his age and at first it wasn't really noticeable, but now it is. And the worst part was that HE noticed.
At one point in the beginning of the summer he even turned to me and said "mamma I want to grow".... my heart broke.
I'm not a very big woman, actually you could even say that I am an incredibly small woman! Even "petite" clothes can be too long for me! So it is only logical to think that he is small because he takes after me, but something just didn't feel right, and I'm really lucky that the doctors that follow my son in the hospital in Modena didn't think so either.
Tests.
Oh so many tests. Painful tests. Long tests. Intense invasive tests.
After literally 2 years of tests we finally know what is going on, he doesn't produce enough growth hormone. Growth Hormone Deficiency is not really something that you hear much about until you are dealing with a child that never changes. He doesn't grow out of his clothes or his shoes and sometimes I WISH I could complain about how his clothes are too short or tight, but it never happens.
This summer he was prescribed a daily growth hormone injection, which we have to give to him nightly. It is really scary for him and it was also really difficult to explain why we were doing this to him and why it must be done every single night for the next 17 or so years. You can almost think of it as insulin for people with diabetes, we need to administer something that his body does not naturally produce.
And that's where superheroes come into play.
The Importance of Superheroes
At three and a half year's old, Zeno loves superheroes! They fight evil, they fly, they have battles and muscles and conquer bad guys - they are literally the coolest things on the face of the Earth. He loves the idea that HE can be a super hero. He invents wildly elaborate stories of battling evil while we walk through the streets of Bologna with a fly swatter in his hand, kicking big kids, jumping huge jumps and letting his imagination take him to incredible places where normal kids save the world and anything is possible.
One night before giving him his medicine, when his panic started to settle in and his anxiety brings on the kind of sadness and fear that no mother ever wants to see in her child, I told him that this was "super hero medicine". It would make him stronger, bigger and healthier and he is a very special boy because he has been chosen to receive it.
And something just clicked. Suddenly, everything was made a little easier to explain and sweeter to swallow. Which is why kids deserve heroes, they deserve to become them. And this kid is mine.
ScoobyDoo.com, DCKids and Looney Toons are all available in English, Italian, French, Portuguese, Polish, German and Spanish, which is just awesome if you are like me and raising your child to be bilingual.
I was poking around and found a VERY cool game where you can make your own Super Hero, so I present to you:
Super Hero Zeno
Zeno literally went out of his mind when he saw this and now I keep it over his medicine, as a reminder of the Super Man he will become. And he has really started to grow since the summer and I'm happy to say that his clothes are becoming too short!
If you live in Italy feel free to enter the giveaway below for a chance to win $100 at Amazon thanks to Scooby Doo!
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